Best of #brick

Unbaked or baked, luxury villas or community centres, bricks are everywhere. Their meaning might change completely, but they remain a great opportunity for experimentation without a grave risk of pollution. They are clay, and can go back to being just that. Here you can have a look at ten projects recently published on Domusweb.

– The renovation project by Architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu in Ghent, Belgium, rethinks what there already is, but totally differently.

– Masquespacio had the challenge to combine a breakfast cafè, a restaurant and a cocktail bar in one single space in Valencia, recreating a Mediterranean feel.

– The church in Vilanova was half destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, and then abandoned: in their renovation project AleaOlea preserved the introspection atmosphere adding a white shell.

– Just by using recycled pulp, Li Xiao-Ming casted a paper brick for indoors and outdoors, that is environmental friendly, waterproof and load-bearing.

– Realised by united4design in Niamey, Niger, this brick housing building increases density and strives to address more than the need for culturally appropriate housing.

– This house in Mexico by Comunal: Taller de Arquitectura features a modular and prefabricated building system, based on panels made with bamboo oldhamii.

– As if it were the case of a precious musical instrument, SPRB Arquitectos’ house in Gadalajara is a robust wrapping that develops around the position of a majestic pianoforte.

– Inspired by the German machinery manufacturer Carl Schlickeysen who first patented the Brickmaking machine, Enorme Studio created a colourful furniture system.

– Italian NGO Made in Earth coinceived a building in Tiruvannamalai, India, as a semitransparent wall, a kind of curly ribbon changing its curvature and height.

– The vacation house designed by Indian studio Design Work Group in Sania Hemad, India, features two walls that run throughout it, connecting and dividing the internal spaces.

Top: united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017. Photo Torsten Seidel