Public institutions

Maitland Riverlink, New South Wales, Australia

Client: Maitland City Council

Architect: CHROFI Architects

Brick: D71 DNF + 1,180 bricks in custom formats in the same clay

Completed: 2018

Photos: Justin Alexander

Sharp looking soft corners

Custom bricks with sharp corners create a precise profile in a multi-purpose house along a river in New South Wales.

CHROFI knew early on that Riverlink would be brick-built, and that very special materials would be required to achieve the desired effect.

“When you get close to the building and touch it, it conveys a clear sense of something human and recognisable,” explains Joshua Zoeller, architect and senior associate partner at CHROFI.

The surrounding old houses’ brick façades alternate between soft yellow and cream, with some fin sandstone buildings in between.

“Petersen D71 proved to be the perfect match in every respect. It has just the right powdery tone, and there’s even something sandstone-like about it,” Zoeller says.

The Riverlink building is characterised by its sharp, tapered wall corners, which required custom solutions.

“At two of the corners, the walls meet at angles of 18 and 22 degrees, respectively,” says Zoeller. “We had to specially commission a number of bricks from Petersen, including some with rounded corners. While the corners look razor-sharp from a distance, up close, you see they are rounded. This changes the look in a quite unique way.”

About Maitland Riverlink

The town of Maitland in New South Wales, on the banks of the Hunter River, has been a thriving trading town for centuries. About 80 years ago, the river began to overflo its banks, and between 1949 and 1955, Maitland repeatedly endured heavy and devastating floods The town stagnated, and the new houses built on the High Street were positioned facing away from the river.

The flooing has since abated, and a project to revitalise the city was launched around 12 years ago. This resulted in the construction of Riverlink, an architectural landmark that re-establishes physical and visual contact between Maitland’s city centre and the Hunter River.

The building is designed as an open gateway between the High Street and the river, and its café and restaurant quickly made it a focal point for the townspeople. Maitland Riverlink also houses office for citizen services and functions as an attractive covered urban space that hosts various outdoor events.

Kannikegården, parish hall, Ribe Cathedral, Denmark

Client: Ribe Domsogns Menighedsråd

Architect: Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter

Archaeology: South-west Jutland Museums

Funding for landscape project: Realdania

Completed: 2016

Brick: C48 customised by Lundgaard & Tranberg, 630 x 350 x 50 mm

Photos: Anders Sune Berg

Medieval associations

A special edition of Cover fosters kinship between a new parish hall and the surrounding 12th-century architecture.

It was crucial that the materials used in Kannikegården harmonised with the cathedral and surrounding buildings on the main square, all of which are brick with tiled roofs. At the same time, the parish hall needed its own distinct identity.

The architects and Petersen Tegl developed a special edition of Cover, which was firs used at the Sorø Art Museum in 2011. The custom Cover measures 350 x 630 mm and weighs over 15 kg. From a distance, the clinker-clad surface appears light compared to the surrounding brick buildings. Up close, the irregularities of the granular brick become obvious, echoing the crooked medieval buildings, for which tolerances were measured in inches.

Its proximity to the buildings to the south dictated that the hall had to be tapered slightly towards the west, leaving a diagonal incision in the roof. The crooked look is common in Ribe, where many buildings have had to adapt to their neighbours over time. This determined the size of the new Cover, as the bricks had to be relatively large to ‘sew’ them together in an elegant manner along the roof edge.

About Kannikegården

Kannikegården in Ribe is a long building on the south of the square, opposite the cathedral. It houses facilities for the parish council and cathedral staff, as well as a 100-seat lecture theatre. In the course of the project, an exhibition space was also added, as the excavation work on the site in 2012 uncovered archaeological remains of the cloisters built in 1100 – possibly the earliest brick building in Denmark. Believed to have been part of the refectory wall, the ruins of the old monastery were immediately subjected to a preservation order. They were integrated into the new building and are now on display to the public. An open glass façade stretches the entire length of the ground floo, while the rest of the façades, gables and roofs are covered with brick shells.

Kannikegården was one of fiv finaists in the Mies van der Rohe Award 2017 due to its “exceptional interaction with both the cathedral and the wider urban space. At the same time, it is also a genuine architectural expression of today, providing a functional space and, in particular, underscoring and contextualising the cultural, historical significanc of its setting.”

“Firing bricks is a kind of alchemy. Using mock-ups, the brickworkers were able to make decisions about colour on the site. Tiny adjustments to the oxygen supply in the ovens eventually resulted in just the right mix of rustic red hues to enable the new building to blend in with its surroundings.”

Erik Frandsen, architect, partner, Lundgaard & Tranberg

Goel Center for Theater and Dance, Massachusetts, USA

Client: Phillips Exeter Academy

Architect: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects

Completed: 2019

Brick: K92 + five ifferent formats of handmade, glazed bricks

Photos: Michael Moran, Tom Eckerle

Theatre curtain in fiery bric

A flaming ed and orange curtain in glazed, moulded brick welcomes visitors when arriving to a theatre building.

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and their client wanted the Goel Center for Theater and Dance to have a distinctive entrance area, the texture and colour of which would provide a stark contrast to the rustic, grey façades. The vision was for an undulating surface in strong, red hues, resembling a theatre curtain that is pulled aside to let the performance begin. A glass entrance is drawn back from the façade, alluding to the large space behind it.

The vision was realised by the brickworks in Broager, which produced fiv different curved and rectangular bricks, the largest measuring 489 x 511 mm.

The bricks were glazed at the brickworks in red, orange and light brown. To achieve exactly the right shade, the thickness of the glaze had to be precisely measured. Careful consideration was also given to the bricks’ rounded and angular forms in order to achieve the illusion of folds in a hanging curtain. The fact that the brick is made by hand and therefore has a rustic surface means that the colour pigments are distributed somewhat unevenly, which gives the beautiful surface a flame-ike appearance.

About the Goel Center for Theater and Dance

The square 5,200-m2 building includes an auditorium housing the main stage, a blackbox studio, several rehearsal rooms and dance studios, as well as a whole range of ancillary services. The building has almost no internal symmetries. Instead, it consists of a network of corridors, stairways, and rooms connected in an irregular but extremely functional manner within a square floo plan.

The architectural concept was inspired by a geode – a stone with a rough, uneven outside but a glittering inside. The client wanted the theatre building to contrast a natural, rustic exterior and a radiant and active interior.

Irregular, hard-fied bricks would add precisely the raw simplicity that architects and clients sought. They alighted on a handmade Kolumba, the diverse, greyish hues of which are at once muted and distinctive.

After-school club, Allenmoos, Switzerland

Client: Stadt Zürich

Architect: Boltshauser Architekten AG

Completed: 2013

Brick: K43, custom format 20 x 110 x 530 mm

Photos: Paul Kozlowski

Clinker façades with brick quality

Custom-made, hard-fied clinkers add warmth and rusticity to an after-school club in a Swiss suburb.

When commissioned to transform a school pavilion into an after-school facility in Allenmoos, Boltshauser Architekten originally wanted a brick façade in Kolumba, similar to the facing wall in their own Zurich studio. However, the authorities placed strict limits on the amount of energy used to produce the materials for the pavilion, which precluded using a 37-mm thick brick – the standard Kolumba measurement.

Instead Boltshauser asked Petersen Tegl to produce a custom clinker that was only 20 mm thick, 110 mm wide and 530 mm long. It is directly attached to the underlying 250-mm insulation and pointed with a cement mortar compressed to a couple of millimetres. To ensure the façade was durable, the studio built a 1:1 mock-up that coped admirably with all kinds of weather conditions.

The expansion joints are carefully positioned in all of the outward- and inward-facing corners but deliberately avoided in the middle of the long, north-facing façade. The handmade Kolumba clinker is not completely flat which endows the façade with a welcoming, textured character, avoiding the clinical, bathroom-like feel of many façades clad with tiles or facing bricks. The clinkers’ horizontal format emphasises the building’s resting form, while the vertical joints dispel any association with a massive wall.

About the after-school club in Allenmoos

Boltshauser Architekten were commissioned to extend a 1958 school pavilion and convert it into an after-school club for children aged 4-13. The basement and a few concrete walls from the original pavilion turned out to be reusable and have been integrated into the new building. The resulting structure greatly resembles the aesthetic of the original modernist pavilion but has a warmer, more empathetic feel.

The same plot that previously housed six south-facing rooms now hosts five with a connecting corridor along the back. The fla roof is fited with skylight boxes running the length of the building like a backbone.

To the north-west, the building has stairs running down to the basement, toilets and a kitchen with the same proportions and window placement as the fiv rooms. In the west gable, the main offices large window directly echoes the front door – the only opening presenting itself in the east-facing gable.

One new element is the loggia, which connects the building to the park. From the inside, the loggia feels protective. From the outside, it conveys permeability and transparency.

Gothenburg City Library, extension, Sweden

Client: Higab

Architect: Erséus Arkitekter

Completed: 2016

Brick: D32 + customised bricks in three formats

Photos: Ulf Celander

Conic-shaped tile columns

Narrow columns made from custom bricks frame the glass façade of Gothenburg City Library’s extension, elegantly preserving the brick motif on the original building.

Gothenburg City Library has a new three-sided glass extension. It was important to make it blend in with the surrounding cultural institutions, all of which are in yellow brick. The solution was to suspend slender pillars in grey-yellow brick in front of the glass façades.

Viewed head-on, the library looks open and transparent, but from more oblique angles, the exterior is gradually transformed and the brick becomes more prominent. The effect is achieved by the relatively close spacing of the pillars, each of which is two brick lengths deep.

Erséus Arkitekter designed three different moulded bricks, including a conical one that endows the pillars with their tapered shape. The 37-mm-high moulded bricks are made of the same Danish blue clay as D32. The yellow brick has a partially whitish surface, derived from the white, slurried clay used as a lubricant when the lump of clay is pressed out of the mould.

Drawings of the special format bricks for the project. Below, detail, horizontal section.

About Gothenburg City Library

Gothenburg City Library is on Götapladsen in Sweden’s second-largest city and is surrounded by several large, historic cultural institutions, all in yellow brick. In order to adapt to its monumental neighbours, the library has its own yellow-brick façades, albeit in a form and idiom reflecing its era.

The building is the third structure to house the city library. The firs was constructed in 1897, and the current one was designed by Lund & Valentin Arkitekter and opened by the author Astrid Lindgren in 1967.

Erséus Architects refurbished and extended the library in 2012-14. The largest section of the extension is north-facing and houses conference facilities, a large café, a new main entrance and a foyer. To increase the library’s footprint and retain the link with the nearby park, the architects wrapped an extension around the existing building on three sides.

City Circle Line (M3), Copenhagen, Denmark

Client: Metroselskabet (Copenhagen Metro)

Architect and engineer: COWI, Arup Systra JV

Main contractor: Copenhagen MetroTeam CMT, a Salini Impregilo Group Company

Completed: 2019

Brick: Custom format Kolumba in various colours

Brick suspension system: Fischer

Photos: Anders Sune Berg

“We asked Petersen to produce the bricks because we know they welcome challenges and are happy to develop new products. And we weren’t disappointed. It was an eye-opener to meet artisans willing to experiment tirelessly throughout the development process, with minor variations during the firing process, until the bricks had exactly the look we wanted.”

Nille Juul-Sørensen, architect and associate, Arup

Underground textures

Each of the 17 new stations on the recently completed City Circle Line has its distinct look. Four have wall panels made of handmade brick.

Aksel Møllers Have Station

Located in Frederiksberg, home to many fine ornate buildings. Many of the local façades are decorated with glazed brick, which inspired the decision to glaze the station bricks diagonally, creating a beautiful play of light. Brick: K21 with glaze.

Nørrebros Runddel Station

Located right by Assistens Cemetery, where the surrounding buildings are made of brick. Using a single type of light-coloured brick and a single overhead light source underscores the sense of a sacred place. The golden hue also references the yellow-washed walls around the cemetery. Brick: K71.

Nuuks Plads Station

Three bricks in three different shades of grey reference a neighbouring building from 1964, clad in black slate – the National Archives’ storage facility, designed by architect Nils Koppel. A powerful, natural material was needed to complement this iconic Copenhagen building, and a greyish hue was an obvious choice. Brick: K91, K51, K50.

Enghave Plads Station

The neighbourhood around the station is dominated by heavy, dark, brick buildings that stretch all the way back to Copenhagen Central Station. The combination of three types of red bricks creates a surface that evokes most of the red nuances that meet the eye above ground. Brick: K23, K33, K36.

About the City Circle Line

The City Circle Line has a consistent design language both above and below ground. At street level, the stations are easily identifiabl by their glass lift towers and daylight-channelling prisms.

The stations are hugely important structures and have to stand out in the urban space – many Copenhageners have an emotional attachment to the station nearest their home. Each station has a distinct look due to its wall cladding, which varies in the different parts of the city.

For example, the wall panels in the Marmorkirken (Marble Church) station are clad in Gotland limestone, referencing the architecture of the Frederiksstaden area, which is characterised by natural stone.

Brick was chosen for the four stations as a recognisable, very Danish and particularly tactile material. The wall panels – a modifie version of Kolumba – are mounted on a lightweight steel construction supplied by Fischer, behind which is a space for cables. As Kolumba is handmade, it has a certain amount of tolerance in terms of measurements.

All the bricks were calibrated to within a few millimetres on the short side to achieve a precise measurement, allowing them almost to touch. The largest surface of the bricks faces outwards, creating a uniform but distinctly rustic idiom.

Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA

Client: Princeton University

Architect: Tod Williams & Billie Tsien Architects

Associated architect: Ballinger

Completed: 2016

Brick: K92 + 18 different custom format bricks in the same clay

Photos: ©Michael Moran/OTTO

Idiom humanised by brick

The brickwork in a recently built Princeton building blend in with the surrounding brick architecture and expresses at the same time the look of natural stone.

Most of the buildings at Princeton University are built in grey stone and red brick. For the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, architects Tod Williams & Billie Tsien and their client chose the light-coloured K92. The wild bond gives the building a handmade structure and texture but with shades reminiscent of light-coloured natural stone.

The Andlinger Center is composed of precise and minimal shapes and completely smooth façades, with recessed windows and doors. The architects insisted that every edge and corner in the building should merge seamlessly and without dissonance. To achieve the harmonious façades, they used 18 customised bricks made of K92 clay, which blends into the brickwork without making a fuss. One of the custom products is a brick measuring 483 x 483 mm, which gives a beautiful finis on the walls around the large multi-level terraces.

“Engineering is a bridge discipline, no longer a pure study of chemistry, mathematics or biology. There is now much greater recognition of the need for engineering and the humanities to work side-by-side. The desire to convey this coming together of the two disciplines determined the choice of material for the Andlinger Center, and the use of Petersen brick humanised the overall expression.”

Billie Tsien, architect

About Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Princeton University was founded in the New Jersey town of the same name in 1746 and is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. An Ivy League university alongside Harvard and Yale, Princeton consists of more than 200 buildings, including Nassau Hall from 1756, which served as the original United States Capitol building.

Tod Williams & Billie Tsien Architects were commissioned to design one of the most recent additions to the Princeton campus. Called the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the facility is devoted to research into sustainable energy production.

Some of the labs in the Center conduct research into materials at the atomic level, which requires an ultra-low-vibration environment. To achieve that level of stability, the labs had to be built directly on bedrock – i.e. below ground level. The 12,000-m2 building is divided into three pavilions – two containing laboratories and one a lecture theatre. The sunken gardens allow plenty of daylight to reach the subterranean rooms.

Christian IV’s Brewhouse, Copenhagen, Denmark

Builder: King Christian IV

Completed: 1608-1762

Repairs to the brickwork on the façade, 1996

Brick: Medieval format bricks, 285 x 140 x 85 mm made in custom colours of red and blue clay

Architect: Bornebusch

Photos: Anders Sune Berg

New bricks with 17th-century patina

As part of the façade repair, new bricks replaced ones that were 400 years old – and the difference is imperceptible.

The façades on the Brewhouse, parts of which are almost 415 years old, occasionally need an overhaul. The last time bricks were replaced was about 25 years ago. Bornebusch have been associated with Christian IV’s Brewhouse for many years.

In 1996, following a survey of the state of the building and options for the interior, Bornebusch undertook repairs to the façades. At that time, the brickwork looked mottled, with an age difference of up to 200 years between the oldest bricks, dating from 1608, and the sections rebuilt after two major fies.

Brickwork is well suited to repairs, as individual bricks can easily be replaced. The challenge is to fin bricks that are a good fi for the existing look. For the restoration of the façades of Christian IV’s Brewhouse, Bornebusch and Petersen Tegl developed a custom brick measuring 285 x 140 x 85 mm. With their rich play of reddish, greenish and yellowish shades, the new bricks blend in beautifully with the surrounding medieval ones.

About Christian IV’s Brewhouse

With its enormous roof surfaces and huge, flame-ed medieval brick façades, Christian IV’s Brewhouse is one of Copenhagen’s most spectacular historic buildings. Built by King Christian IV more than 400 years ago, it was designed as a strong bastion and formed part of Copenhagen’s defences. To this day, the aloof, enigmatic, approximately 8,000-m2 building overlooks the waterfront and Frederiksholms Canal.

After the construction of the fortress town of Christianshavn, the bastion lost its military importance, and in 1618 it was converted into a brewery for the military. After fies in 1632 and 1767, the brewery was moved to a new address in the town. It was rebuilt in its current form and spent two centuries as a warehouse for the Royal Arsenal Museum, among others.

With its angled floo plan, up to 2.5-metre-thick exterior walls, and numerous cross vaults and cylinder vaults, the building’s sturdy, brick-built ground floo clearly resembles a military fortificaion. The ground floo consists of one vast room called ‘The Brick Ceiling’. It is built in a style reminiscent of older warehouses, with a timber roof structure that rises to a height of six storeys.