Three reasons your glass building needs brick
/Nowhere in the pages of this blog will you find the claim that clay brick can deliver the same look as a glass curtain wall. Brick is extremely versatile and can’t be beat when it comes to design flexibility, but the aesthetics of brick and glass are at opposite ends of the spectrum. However, as opposites tend to attract, so brick and glass can be combined for fantastic results. Here’s why incorporating brick into your largely-glass designs is a great idea.
Brick adds substance. Largely-glass buildings sometimes seem to lack an anchor — a visual foundation that ties them to the ground, which brick can provide when strategically incorporated into the facade due to its (literal and figurative) weightiness. And, with all that glassy shine and transparency, the portions of a combination structure that are built with brick deliver much needed contrast and visual warmth. Mixing brick’s legendary durability into the facade also counterbalances the unavoidable psychological notion that a glass structure — true or not — is fragile.
Brick engages people. Looking at zoomed-out portraits of grand designs can cause our jaws to drop, but that’s not how people engage with buildings day-to-day. Large expanses of a single material are intimidating and cold in the up-close where we actually attempt to make sense of a structure with our eyes and emotions when shopping, going to work, or doing business. Because of its small, unit-by-unit nature, brick is a human-scaled material. Even large areas of brick facade are more inviting than other materials, partly due to the visual breakdown provided by the mortar surrounding each individual unit, and partly because humans have been engaging with masonry structures for thousands of years. It just feels right. That feeling can make a largely-glass structure way more inviting to its human users. After all, structures should be designed for people, not portraits.
Brick delivers sustainability. Including clay brick in your largely-glass designs can help your structure achieve green building certifications. Brick often contains a high percentage of recycled content and can be claimed as a locally-sourced material pretty much anywhere in North America. And, as yet another great example of how these dramatically different materials can go together beautifully, brick can be used opposite glass facades on building interiors in passive solar applications to slow the building’s overall heat transfer, reducing energy consumption.
All of that written argument for glass and brick combinations is fine, but the best case is made by actual examples. Enjoy the photos below, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn for more in the future.
