Brick enhances brick to make a campus sing!
/Phase II of the General Academic and Music Building is an ambitious expansion of the Music Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. The project joins Phase 1 in further defining and delineating the western edge of the central quadrangle with a porous boundary of interconnected courtyards, covered passages, loggias, and intimate exterior seating areas.
Designers from Richter Architects broke with the monolithic character of typical campus buildings by proposing four parallel sculptured brick masses that slip and slide past each other along a north-south axis. On the ground level, an exterior promenade along this axis defines courtyards, shaded meeting spaces and open-air performance areas. Multilevel glass bridges span above, connecting these staggered brick islands almost as stepping stones in a stream, creating spaces for interaction and perches for enjoying the view below.
For Elizabeth Chu Richter FAIA, the goal was to “enrich the architectural language” of the campus which was predominately a rote recitation of buff brick coursing and decorative appliques of cast stone. Brick masonry emerged as a critical design element early in the design process and was essential in achieving the college’s life cycle goal for the structure (a century or more!) on a modest budget. Brick’s incredible design flexibility allowed for consistency with the previously established campus palette of buff blended brick while opening the possibilities for a dramatically more creative approach to textures, colors, and patterns. The tectonic flexibility of brick-laying techniques and their graphic potential allowed the designers to fine-tune their response at multiple scales, from the intimate detail to the exterior surfaces flexing in response to the South Texas climate. The sense of detail is expressed in the precise intersection of brick planes, the crisp returns of the cantilevered sawtooth wedges, and the subtle striations of brick coursing that flow from one plane to another. From a distance the new brick blends with the campus palette, yet close inspection reveals a structured layering of a range of brick colors, creating the effect of sandstone geologic formations.
The Music Building at Del Mar college emphatically demonstrates the multiple dimensions of value that fired clay brick – supplied by Acme Brick Tile & Stone in this case – can deliver to a project. The material brings permanence, durability, and beauty to any structure, and in the hands of talented designers it can truly make a place sing.
All photos by David Richter, FAIA
