Education

Conquering the tyranny of brickwork

The ancient Greeks believed earth, fire, water and air were the basis of all things. Bricks contain these four basic elements and though brickwork can be considered primitive and low tech, its potential is by no means exhausted.

Jonathan Sergison of Sergison Bates Architects showed that this archaic building material allows manifold applications and can deliver a myriad of effects. The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies In Architecture and Urban Design, now part of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (BK), invited him to share his insights on working with brickwork. To a packed room K at BK on January 13, 2017, he presented his office’s rigorous research through practice into the possibilities of the material.

Culture and traditions

Practice includes a thorough understanding of the technical and practical aspects of brickwork construction and a fascination coupled to the sites of his projects and respect for their existing brickwork culture and traditions.

Building in the UK, Belgium and Switzerland and getting feedback from bricklayers and has given Sergison a rich awareness of what is possible with brickwork in a given context. Transcending these boundaries allows him to explore bringing quality and nobility to this ubiquitous form of building and exploit the atmosphere and presence of the material.

For some, bricks are an exacting material to apply. Traditionally they should be assembled in certain ways, but though they’re modular, no two bricks are the same. Sergison admitted that the first time he set out a plan according to the dimensions of bricks he found it to be annoying, because it implied the plan would be determined by this principle.

“It appeared somewhat like a tyranny,” he said. “I know now that brickwork has the capacity to be tolerant. You can cut bricks and vary the thickness of the joints.”

Create expression

In his public and residential projects he explores where to apply special levels of detail, sometimes manipulating planes and surfaces to create expression in the façades, sometimes using piers as the dominant organizing element. Depending on the project, he spoke of investigating the expression in brickwork of abstract notions of weight and permanence, or stability and homeliness, the strength or fragility of corners, and the spaces between building masses.

His compositional strategies include organizing the relation of solid to void, applying loggias and glazing or recessed panels, relentlessly seeking to elicit an experience.

So for him brickwork is not an exacting material, which is what makes it so fascinating. “All of the qualities of imprecision of the material are what makes it pleasurable,” he said. “It has softness and the capacity to give something at an emotional level.”

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