Nov 2011 - Brick - a 21st century material.

The market for many building materials continues to be difficult - and traditional brick is no exception. Looking back 25 years, brick industry sales were typically over 6 billion bricks a year. That figure is now closer to 1.2 billion. But that is still a very significant market, representing over 20 million square metres of brickwork.

Brick though is still beautiful and whilst demand has significantly declined, brickwork remains the preferred choice for many architects. Modern brick cladding systems such as Gebrik undoubtedly have a place in 21st century construction.

The evidence of this is seen in projects across a wide range of sectors that are anything but in decline - schools, student accommodation, budget hotels, hospitals and health centres etc, etc. There are many reasons for the growth in demand for brick cladding systems, not least the fact that the systems don't constrain or stifle creativity, they positively encourage it.

Paul Richards, Aquarian Cladding's Managing Director highlights some recent projects: "At a school in Stoke on Trent the project architect wanted to create a really unusual aesthetic by combining both vertical and horizontal stretcher bond brickwork. A challenge that would have been head-scratchingly complicated with traditional brick work is straightforward with a modular system. Similarly stack bond can be achieved just as easily and cost-effectively as stretcher bond, offering enormous scope to architects and designers."

"At a school in Carshalton the design called for a 10% mix of glazed bricks to be incorporated into the traditional blue brickwork - again a simple effect achieved with Gebrik to create a striking visual appearance. Taking the colour theme a step further an architect in Holland developed a polychromatic brickwork design using 5 different brick colours in a mix of smooth and handmade textures for a sports centre in Leerdam. With careful planning the design was all created on panels in the Gebrik factory, delivered to site and quickly installed - exactly as the architect intended".

Features too need not be complicated or prohibitively expensive. For example overhanging soffits can easily be achieved as the brick panels are non-load bearing.

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