Brick is a material that can restore and reinvigorate even the most hopeless of building sites. In the case of the lot that stands at the corner of 45th and East 7th Street in New York City, a devastating and deadly gas explosion destroyed the three historic tenement buildings that once stood there. But as is true of any shocking tragedy, what matters most is how we react and respond.

Brick manufacturers haven’t yet figured out a way to make individual brick units flex (though great designers and masons can come close), but no other material is capable of greater design flexibility than brick. It’s one of the greatest attributes of fired clay brick, but what exactly does it mean?

Ask around in architectural circles and you’ll get many different definitions of “design flexibility,” but in the specific context of designing and building with brick, you’ll probably hear the same few themes over and over again.

Though often thought of as nothing more than a dependable building material, the substantial weight of brick can also be the perfect medium to express monumental emotions and historical impact. The designers at Substance Architecture and artist Kerry James Marshall found that to be true when they set out to create A Monumental Journey, a sculpture in Des Moines, Iowa, celebrating the legacy of black lawyers who founded the National Bar Association in 1925.  

In future blog posts this fall we’ll be encouraging you, as architects, builders, and designers, to enter the Brick Industry Association’s Brick in Architecture Awards. We offered the same encouragement last year, and you may be thinking, “I’d like to see the winners of that brick awards program…thingy.” We’d like you to see them, too, and we have just the solution for you.

Brick is one of few building materials that can build on a traditional aesthetic character while also embracing modern construction technology. That unique characteristic is part of what paved the way to success for the designers at HDR Inc. when designing the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland campus.

At the onset of the project, the design team faced a challenge that is increasingly familiar to practicing architects — to create a new, state-of-the-art building that will support modern uses while allowing it to build on design themes already present at a historic university campus. While that challenge is familiar, it is by no means easy to overcome. Doing so requires designers to make tactful and tasteful decisions throughout the design process, not the least of which is selecting the ideal material palette.  

As with the outfield wall at the Chicago Cub’s Wrigley Field, ivy growing on brick structures seems to carry with it an air of tradition and history. Many agree that ivy on brick is a dignified and classic design choice.

But we’re not going to debate the design merits of brick and ivy here. Rather, let’s discuss whether that ivy is good for the brick structure itself.