SA Affordable Housing November / December 2016 // Issue: 61 | Page 8

NEWS

Bricks for all seasons

Whether accepted, concealed, rejected, desired or compared with
more modern materials, clay brick has played an active role within
the culture of architecture throughout the ages.
By Musa Shangase of Corobrik

Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, where brick is featured prominently in the design. Image: www.architectural-review.com

“What do you want, brick?” - This is a question which has
gained legendary status within architectural circles.
Playing the famous modernist architect, Louis I Kahn (1901
– 1974) in the movie, Indecent Proposal (1993), actor
Woody Harrelson states, “A common, ordinary brick wants
to be something more than it is!” And, it was Kahn who first
posed a question in the early 1970s that has since attained
legendary status within architectural circles: "What do you
want, brick?"
The answer, according to Kahn, is that brick wants to be
both structural and cladding… and this he achieved to
great effect in the monumental Capital Complex in Dhaka,
Bangladesh: a sequence of iconic buildings in vernacular
red brick and concrete that appear to float above the
surrounding waters, a combination which is at once
spiritually uplifting and magical while being practical and
robust.
Closer to home, award winning South African architect,
Peter Rich, who is well-known for his authentic
contemporary African design expressed a similar
sentiment at the recent Corobrik Architectural Student of
the Year Awards. Commenting on a number of innovative
projects in which brick has featured prominently, he said
this about the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre: “Using
mathematics and ancient ways of doing things, we realised
you could harness the forces of nature in a natural way to
actually make brick float in the air.”
Using compressed baked bricks as the building medium for
the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, Rich says: “There
is an incredible way of building that we have forgotten and
my adventure was to understand and rectify that, which
lead me back to authenticity.

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“Named Building of the Year at the World Architecture
Festival in 2009, the 1 500m² Mapungubwe Interpretation
Centre on South Africa’s northern border was part of this
journey of discovery. In collaboration with engineers John
Ochsedorf from MIT and Michael Ramage from the
University of Cambridge, Rich designed vaulted structures
inspired by the rugged landscape. Based on a 600-yearold timbrel vaulting construction method, the domes
required minimal formwork and no steel reinforcement.
Commenting on the use of compressed baked bricks made
on site, Rich explains, “We used approximately 200 000
clay bricks and as we were six and a half hours from the
closest major city our aim was to rely on the materials of
the site to save on transport.”
Through the decades, architects have used brick with
enthusiasm and, like Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959),
boasted that in their hands the ordinary clay brick became
‘worth its weight in gold’.
For the greater part of architectural history, brick walls
have played a functional role providing support for walls
and roof. It is only since the late 19 th century that brick
became a creative source used by architects to capture the
essence of a design project.
With award winning architects like Peter Rich, whose
projects harness African authenticity and Paraguayan
architect, Solano Benitez, who is more interested in
building methods rather than form, and both
experimenting with the versatility of bricks we can look
forward to increasingly innovative, exciting and
challenging design projects which harness the beauty of
the humble brick…and perhaps, go a long way to
answering, Kahn’s question: “What do you want, brick?”