A single, fired clay brick is a humble block. And yet, in the hands of excellent designers and masons it can be made to do amazing things. That’s never more true than in the case of brick sculpture.

In contemporary construction, brick is not just a building material but rather a component of a highly engineered, elegant, wall system. No other facade material comes with such a thoroughly researched and highly effective system for its application to the structure.

So what is the brick wall system effective at accomplishing? The benefits are many, so let’s just take a look at three of them.

Modular masonry has many advantages, leading to the question, “Why is non-modular brick even a thing?”

Well, the truth is, any brick size can be modular in a roundabout way. Take any brick length and add the thickness of a mortar joint and you have a module, albeit not necessarily a 4” module. A structure can be designed around repetitions of this unique module. Moving beyond 4” modularity allows for unique visual looks and potential cost savings.

Modular. Great word. It calls to mind sectional couches and Legos. If you’re in the architecture and design world, we hope you also think of fired clay brick.

It’s tempting to think about choosing a size of brick as purely a logistical consideration, and for good reason. A brick’s size may affect the speed of a building’s construction, the cost of labor, the amount of mortar used, and the cost of the brick itself. But the aesthetic design considerations that go into choosing the right brick size are at least as significant.

The “contemporary bonds” (a catch-all term for patterns of brick that defy categorization) in use here often project brick beyond the wall’s face, skip individual brick units altogether to form brick screens, or simply avoid any real pattern at all. Others weave together combinations of brick sizes, colors, and orientations that appear random at first, but upon closer inspection reveal an intricate, repeating pattern.