• Building in Brick 3/4

  Sergison Bates
  Architects
  

   

   

   

   

  London, UK
  

  London- and Zurich-based Sergison Bates architects use, write and think about brick a lot in their practice.

• What do you like about brick’s qualities as a material?

   

   

  »We like the inherent properties of brick and the scale of it. A brick can be held in the hand, yet used to create buildings of great size. The making of bricks has a direct relationship to what the Ancient Greeks considered the constituent elements of all things: air, fire, water, earth.
  
  Bricks are also infinitely variable: their character depends on their components, the way they are laid, choice of mortar, size of joints. And, as it is built manually, a brick wall bears the imprint of the people that have built it.«

  Previous page: Public Library in the Flemish seaside town of Blankenberge, Belgium, 2011. The storey-high wall panels of blue-brown brick are laid in a bond with its vertical joint wider than its horizontal, designed to give a textile-like character to the wall. (All photos courtesy Sergison Bates architects)
  

• Left and centre: Urban housing, Finsbury Park, London, UK, 2008. Here the brick, burnt-red in colour has flush mortar joints, designed to make each brick panel read as a monolithic element; right: Studio House, London, UK, 2004: a timber-framed structure on which the brick is treated as a coarse surface cladding, with a mortar slurry washed over its surface.

• • Sergison Bates was established in 1996 by Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates and joined by Mark Tuff as partner in 2005. They have engaged with all dimensions of architectural and urban design rather than focusing on narrow specialisms, and are currently involved in projects ranging from urban planning and regeneration to public buildings and housing in the UK and mainland Europe. A second office was opened in Zurich in 2010.

 Recent projects include the Nordbahnhof PaN Wohnpark housing project in Vienna (Österreichischer Bauherrenpreis 2014) and the transformation of a listed former brewery building in East London into a new undergraduate campus for Hult International Business School (RIBA National Award 2015).
    
    The practice is committed to a research-based approach, which is supported by the partners’ academic work. Both founding partners have written and published extensively: their latest book, Buildings, was published by Quart Verlag in 2012.
    
    sergisonbates.co.uk

  How does brick function as a material climatically where you build?

   

   

  »In London, the porous character of brick requires careful detailing. But there are centuries of experience to draw upon – after the Great Fire of 1666 it became the building material of choice. In Zurich, we are more cautious in employing brick. Whilst there is a wonderful industrial tradition, the Swiss brick industry is small, which makes it expensive to use. In Belgium nearly all our projects include brick. There, the brick culture is still very special. Building a brick wall in Belgium involves two phases: one person lays the bricks, and then someone else finishes the brickwork by pointing it.

  « I

   

  About Sergison Bates architects

   

   

   

   

   

• COVER

  COVER

  Cover

  Bricks
• Table of contents

  Table of contents
• EDITORIAL

  EDITORIAL

  Editorial

  Bricks
• ESSAY

  ESSAY

  A Brick in the Stomach

  Max Borka on the home-loving Belgians

  Text: Max Borka
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Trümmerfrauen

  The women who cleared the debris of Berlin

  Text: Fiona Shipwright
• VIEWPOINT

  VIEWPOINT

  H Architectes, Barcelona, Spain

  Architects on building in brick 1/4

  Text: Florian Heilmeyer
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Walls of Faith

  Arthur Shoosmith’s New Delhi church

  Text: Rob Wilson
• VIEWPOINT

  VIEWPOINT

  Baumschlager Eberle, Lustenau, Austria

  Architects building in brick 2/4

  Text: Florian Heilmeyer
• ESSAY

  ESSAY

  Catching the Curve

  Eladio Dieste and the brick by Florencia Rodríguez

  Text: Florencia Rodríguez
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Collective Constructs

  Olafur Eliasson’s Collectivity Project

  Text: Sophie Lovell
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Wall-E

  Gramazio & Kohler’s masonry robots

  Text: Fiona Shipwright
• FOCUS

  FOCUS

  Trapped by History

  The new genre of stylish salvage

  Text: Sara Faezypour, Sophie Lovell, Rob Wilson
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Breaking Point

  On the art of blowing up buildings

  Text: Fiona Shipwright
• VIEWPOINT

  VIEWPOINT

  Sergison Bates Architects, London, UK

  Architects on building in brick 3/4

  Text: Rob Wilson
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Blood Bricks

  Child labour in the kilns of Nepal

  Text: Pete Pattisson
• VIEWPOINT

  VIEWPOINT

  Onion, Bangkok, Thailand

  Architects on building in brick 4/4

  Text: Fiona Shipwright
• FOUND

  FOUND

  Masonry Maximus

  A pile of palaces in Ancient Rome

  Text: Rob Wilson
• PHOTO BOOTH

  PHOTO BOOTH

  In the Photo Booth with...

  Wolf D. Prix

  Text: Philipp Sturm
• KLAUSTOON

  KLAUSTOON

  Klaustoon

  XX. Another Brick in the World
• NEXT

  NEXT

  Next

  Uncanny Valley

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