Fired clay brick continues to evolve with new color blends, textures, and architectural shapes that inspire innovative and enduring designs. These design trends are evident in the winning projects from the BIA's Brick in Architecture Awards.
Here’s a look at the latest brick design trends based on recent award winners:
1. Unique brick patterns using different depths and orientation
Photos: Scholz Images
For the west façade of the 77,000-sf Farm Credit Services of America Corporate Office Building 2 in Omaha, Neb., Clark Enersen Partners created an abstract representation of wind blowing through a wheat field—using two brick colors at various depths and orientation. The west façade brick also helps minimize late day glare, while openings in the façade still filter natural light through vertical fins.
2. Gray and white shades of brick
Photos: Slyworks Photography
Cougar Woods Dining Hall, a 25,000-sf pavilion on the University of Houston’s main campus, promotes a passive approach to sustainable design. Designed by PageSoutherlandPage, the dining area has extensive glazing on its north side to provide daylighting within the building, while minimizing heat gain. Solid masonry walls with a lighter color were used to protect the southern and western elevations from the sun and reduce the heat island effect.
In another example, Wormley School Rowhouses in Washington, D.C.’s historic Georgetown neighborhood were painted neutral colors to match the existing neighborhood. While maintaining historic integrity, Cunningham | Quill Architects converted a school building into condominiums and a new row of townhouses built on the adjacent schoolyard.
Photo: Chris Morrison
3. Brick for flexibility in color, shape, and form
Photos: Tony Frederick Photography
For Hendricks Regional Health YMCA, Avon, Ind., American Structurepoint aimed to celebrate the symbiotic relationship of health and wellness through an integral use of brick and organic forms. Brick was used in areas where there were noise and privacy concerns. A two-tone scheme used a deep brown brick color to anchor the façade and hold up the lighter, buff-colored brick to create a sense of place and familiarity with the hospital brand. Brick easily conformed to the straight, angled, and curved walls throughout the facility.
4. Textures: sanded, artisan, wirecut, and tumbled
Photos: Halkin Architectural Photography
The University of Pennsylvania Law School uses masonry to define the image of a 21st century law school. One of Penn Law’s primary goals was to unify its campus with the addition of the new Golkin Hall. To do so required maintaining the material presence of Silverman Hall, built for the law school in 1900. Kennedy & Violich Architecture used sand-molded brick and a distinctive Flemish bond pattern used on all subsequent buildings.
5. Contrasting brick colors and course patterns
Photos: David Sundberg
The 172,000-sf New Settlement Campus in Bronx, N.Y., houses three schools for 1,000 PK-12 students on a busy urban block. Dattner Architects interplays massing, materials, and patterning to create scale and interest for the block-long building. A two-story, red brick commons wing parallels an elevated subway train, and intersects a four-story buff brick classroom wing that bends away from the street. The contrasting brick colors and course patterns distinguish the two wings. A graduated vertical pattern of darker projecting brick articulates the classroom wing’s cream-colored brick façade, which is perpendicular to the elevated train to minimize noise.
6. Hinge-shaped face brick
Photos: Ballogg Photography
Fountaindale Public Library in Bolingbrook, Ill., is located in a suburban environment at the confluence of the village’s municipal campus, tract housing, and a recreational park. To facilitate the organic shape of the building’s exterior, Nagle Hartray Architecture used an innovative, single modular size hinge-shaped face brick for 28 different inside and outside corner conditions.
7. Brick to introduce new architectural motifs/ornamentation
Photos: Dror Baldinger
McKinney York Architects designed the 7,000-sf non-denominational Kent R. Hance Chapel, Lubbock, Texas, in the Spanish Renaissance style of the historic sections of campus. The chapel’s bell tower, curved articulation of the gabled parapet walls and ermine patterning of the principal façade are all instances where brick played a decisive role to introduce new architectural motifs, celebrating only the most important architectural elements.
For more brick designs, see the 2014 and 2013 Brick in Architecture Award winners.
Related Stories
| Jun 14, 2012
Viscardi joins LEO A DALY as VP, corporate director of aviation programs
Viscardi will be responsible for providing the vision and strategy for growing the firm’s aviation practice, identifying and establishing new clients, as well as maintaining existing client relationships.
| Jun 1, 2012
New BD+C University Course on Insulated Metal Panels available
By completing this course, you earn 1.0 HSW/SD AIA Learning Units.
| May 30, 2012
Construction milestone reached for $1B expansion of San Diego International Airport
Components of the $9-million structural concrete construction phase included a 700-foot-long, below-grade baggage-handling tunnel; metal decks covered in poured-in-place concrete; slab-on-grade for the new terminal; and 10 exterior architectural columns––each 56-feet tall and erected at a 14-degree angle.
| May 29, 2012
Reconstruction Awards Entry Information
Download a PDF of the Entry Information at the bottom of this page.
| May 24, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Entry Form
Download a PDF of the Entry Form at the bottom of this page.
| Mar 29, 2012
U.K.’s Manchester Airport tower constructed in nine days
Time-lapse video shows construction workers on the jobsite for 222 continuous hours.
| Mar 27, 2012
Skanska hires aviation construction expert Bob Postma
Postma will manage Skanska’s nationwide in-house team of airport construction experts who lead the industry in building and renovating airport facilities and their essential features.
| Jan 4, 2012
New LEED Silver complex provides space for education and research
The academic-style facility supports education/training and research functions, and contains classrooms, auditoriums, laboratories, administrative offices and library facilities, as well as spaces for operating highly sophisticated training equipment.
| Nov 10, 2011
Skanska Moss to expand and renovate Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport
The multi-phase terminal improvement program consists of an overall expansion to the airport’s footprint and major renovations to the existing airport terminal.