Kazuyo Sejima’s Tokyo townhouses

Martin Pearce profiles Alan Short

Handmade by robot – Bearth & Deplazes

Sergison Bates in Finsbury Park

Claus & Kaan’s Enschede extravaganza

Stephen Taylor and the Surrey vernacular

Brick testament: Eladio Dieste in UruguayAUTUMN 2008

BRICK

BULLETIN

Outdoor activitiesThe fashion for extravagant form in ourbuilt environment doen’t necessarilymean we have to use novel materials.No one could accuse Alan Short ofmaking dull buildings, yet he uses triedand tested materials that will weatherwell – he wants to make buildings that‘you can leave outdoors’. Likewise,many of the spectacular but little-known structures of Uruguayan architect-engineer Eladio Dieste arebuilt from a low-maintenance modularcomponent made from baked clay.Meanwhile, thanks for all your nicecomments on the new Brick Bulletin –we hope you enjoy this issue as much.

Katherina Lewis

To find out more about the bricks or pavers in featuredprojects, or to submit projects for possible publication,email brick@brick.org.uk or phone 01344 885651.

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Contents4 NEWS5 PROJECTS

Claus & Kaan in Enschede Stephen Taylor in GomshallKazuyo Sejima in TokyoRobotic brick facades at Bearth & Deplaze’s Swiss winerySergison Bates in Finsbury Park

12 PROFILEArchitecture to meet social, practical and artistic ends: Martin Pearce meets architect and academic Alan Short

18 PRECEDENTEladio Dieste’s structural gymnastics in Uruguay

22 TECHNICALResearch on the performance of masonry structures in fire

Brick Bulletin Autumn 2008Executive editor: Katherina Lewis tel: 01344 885651 email: brick@brick.org.ukBrick Development Association, Woodside House, Winkfield, Windsor, Berks SL4 2DX

The BDA represents the United Kingdom and Ireland’s clay brick and paver manufacturers and promotes excellence in the architectural, structural and landscapeapplications of brick and pavers. The BDA provides practical, technical and aestheticadvice and information through its website www.brick.org.uk, in its numerous publications and over the phone +44 1344 885651.

Published by the BDA ©2008. Editorial and design by Architecture Today plc.

Frontispiece Claus &Kaan’s De Eekenhofmixed-use developmentin Enschede, Holland (ph: Christian Richters).Cover Seijo townhousesin Tokyo by Kazuyo Sejima(ph: Iwan Baan).Back coverAlan Short (ph: MorganO’Donovan).

BDA member companiesBlockleys Brick t +44 (0)1952 251933 www.michelmersh.com

Bovingdon Brickworks t +44 (0)1442 833176 www.bovingdonbricks.co.uk

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Bulmer Brick & Tile Co t +44 (0)1787 269 232 bbt@bulmerbrickandtile.co.uk

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Carlton Brick t +44 (0)1226 711521 www.carltonbrick.co.uk

Charnwood Forest Brick t +44 (0)1509 503203 www.michelmersh.com

Chartwell Brickworks t +44 (0)1732 463712 www.chartwellbrickworks.com

Coleford Brick & Tile t +44 (0)1594 822160 www.colefordbrick.co.uk

Dunton Brothers t +44 (0)1494 772111 www.michelmersh.com

Errol Brick t +44 (0)1821 642653 www.errolbrick.co.uk

Freshfield Lane Brickworks t +44 (0)1825 790350 www.flb.uk.com

Furness Brick & Tile Co t +44 (0)1229 462411 www.furnessbrick.com

Hammill Brick t +44 (0)1304 617613 www.hammillbrick.co.uk

Hanson Building Products t +44 (0)870 609 7092 www.hanson.co.uk

HG Matthews t +44 (0)1494 758212 www.hgmatthews.com

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Michelmersh Brick & Tile t +44 (0)1794 368506 www.michelmersh.com

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Wm C Reade of Aldeburgh t +44 (0)1728 452982 jha@wmcreade.co.uk

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Tower Brick & Tile t +44 (0)1420 488489 www.towerbrickandtile.co.uk

Tyrone Brick t +44 (0)28 8772 3421 www.tyrone-brick.com

The York Handmade Brick Co t +44 (0)1374 838881 www.yorkhandmade.co.uk

WH Collier t +44 (0)1206 210301 www.whcollier.co.uk

Wienerberger t +44 (0)161 4918200 www.wienerberger.co.uk

BRICK BULLETIN AUTUMN 08

Brick Awards shortlist announced

The Brick Awards shortlist has beenannounced by a judging panel chaired byRoyal Gold Medalist Edward Cullinan. There are 12 category awards, each seek-ing excellence in different aspects ofdesign and construction. Among them arebest private housing development, bestcommercial building and best craftsman-ship. There is one overall winner: the BDABuilding of the Year – Supreme Award goesto the project judged the finest overall.Shortlisted entries include Fuse in Dublin,designed by Box Architects and nominatedfor best international project (pictured).

The full list can be seen on the BDA website. The awards will be presented on 5 November at the Marriott GrosvenorSquare Hotel in London. For tables andtickets contact Katie Chinnock on 020 7560 4272 or kchinnock@cmpi.biz (details: www.brick.org.uk).

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NEWS

FAT library for Walsall

FAT is working closely with Walsall Council,user groups and stakeholders to develop itsproposals for a community library and nurs-ery in the heart of suburban Bentley.

Set on a masonry plinth, the 630 squaremetre building is located at the junction oftwo roads. The building’s dual function isexpressed by two vertical elements: one cladin brick and the other in timber. These alsoframe views of the Cairn (a local landmark)and a nearby community church.

The library and nursery are housed in a‘robust but beautiful’ brick building, saysFAT. The bricks are intended to resemblebooks sitting on stone or concrete ‘shelves’,which are expressed as a diagonal latticeframe, while the ‘books’ comprise a varietyof different shades intended to give a poly-chromatic effect. The external skin is also

Lyons Architects in Victoria

Melbourne-based practice Lyons Architectshas completed a visually arresting nursingfacility situated on the edge of a small coastalcommunity in Victoria, south-east Australia.Resembling a large hotel rather than a tradi-tional ‘white box’ hospital, Morningtonnursing home is inspired by beachside archi-

Battle of the brickies

The Guild of Bricklayers’ nationalbricklaying final is taking place at NorthLindsey College in Scunthorpe on 26September. The event sees 12 regionalbrickies go head-to-head in a six-hour battle, with marks awarded for speed, accuracy, neatness and attention to detail (details: www.guildofbricklayers.org.uk).

Practical advice for specifiers

Comprehensive advice on brickwork speci-fication and construction is available fromthe Brick Development Association in theform of two useful guides. The first, BDAGuide to Successful Brickwork, contains abroad range of information supported byclearly annotated diagrams, colour picturesand a glossary of terms. It also includes asection on innovation in brickwork. Thesecond, Creative Brickwork, demonstratesthe various ways in which brick can be used,covering both the practical and aestheticaspects of creating attractive brickwork(details: www.brick.org.uk/publications).

BDA relocates to the West End

The Brick Development Association is relocating to The Building Centre at 26 Store Street, London, WC1 in earlyOctober (details: www.brick.org.uk).

tecture, including Charles Moore’s SeaRanch in California. The two-storey schemetakes the form of a large, folded pitchedroof that encompasses the whole building ina single gesture. The exterior is clad in over-sized ‘timber’ planks rendered in brick. This is intended to give the devel-opment a friendly, domestic feel, while also satisfying the client’s stringent long-term

performance and maintenance requirements.The patterned planks are configured in acombination of smooth and timber grainbricks. The latter, which were developed inconjunction with the brick manufacturerusing three-dimensional engineering lathesand computer modelling techniques, areformed from conventional house bricksembossed with a striated digital design.

articulated by a range of geometric windowsincluding a circular one looking into atriple-height performance space and ascreen of diamond-shaped northlights thatpick up the brick patterns on the surround-ing facade. The scheme is designed toachieve a minimum ‘very good’ BREEAM assessment rating.

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Claus & Kaan has completed a major resi-dential project in the Dutch city ofEnschede. Located on a triangular site at abusy road intersection, the £8.6m DeEekenhof development forms part of thereconstruction of Roombeek – a residentialdistrict that was partly destroyed by anexplosion at a fireworks factory in 2000.

Planned around a central courtyard with amature oak tree, the 2600 square metrescheme comprises three main elements. Thelargest is a ten-storey tower containing ahealth centre at ground level and apartmentson the upper floors. Adjacent is a row of fivethree-storey, single-family houses and a four-storey building incorporating communalaccommodation, care facilities and theentrance to an underground car park.

The stepped form and linear balconiesof the tower help to reduce its visual mass,while also providing a gradual transition tothe adjacent low-rise buildings. Uniformbeige brick facades – featuring specialcurved bricks at the corners – give thebuilding a homogeneous appearance, rein-forcing its sculptural qualities. Dark, verti-cally-laid bricks differentiate the base fromthe upper floors, helping create a more intimate scale at street level.

Claus & Kaan in Enschede

Credits Architect: Claus & Kaan; design team: FelixClaus, Dick van Wageningen, Jan Gerrit Wessels, JamesWebb, Kerstin Hartmann, Anne Holtrop, RomySchneider; client: Woningcorporatie Domijn, Enschede;photos: Christian Richters.

PROJECTS

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Designed by Kazuyo Sejima & Associates, theSeijo Town Houses comprise 20 small build-ings located in one of Tokyo’s most affluentsuburbs. The orientation of the dwellingsand the multiple connections between themgives the scheme an organic quality, allow-ing it to be read as a single residential blockor a collection of individual houses.

The apartments eschew the oblong plantypical of most townhouses for an informal‘scattered’ arrangement of spaces that pro-vide a range of settings for everyday life. The multi-directional nature of the roomsalso ensures good levels of natural lightingand ventilation. Each unit has its own gar-den, resulting from the shifting geometry of the buildings. These spaces are loosely connected, forming a larger ‘garden’ whereresidents can interact.

Brick was chosen for the external walls tocomplement the surrounding residentialbuildings, many of which are clad with tilesor stone. After evaluating a wide range ofmock-up panels, the architect chose a brickthat is both longer and thinner than thestandard type. A light colour was specifiedto soften the appearance of the shadowsfalling on the walls. Originally red in colour,the bricks were soaked in water-soluble

Currently on site in Gomshall, Surrey, a pairof houses for developer Baylight is locatedwithin the identified village settlement areaand intensifies the road frontage within thevillage centre, writes Stephen Taylor. The proj-ect draws on the pleasantly ‘organic’ evolu-tion of neighbouring villages, as well as theintensity of clustered vernacular forms.

The two small new-build family housesform part of an overall arrangement of fourjuxtaposed forms continuing the textureand grain of the village across this ‘infill’site. The topography, with its level change oftwo metres from north to south, offersopportunities to cut the buildings into thelandscape and define amenity space at bothupper and lower levels.

While the architecture is unmistakablycontemporary, it makes reference to localvernacular building in the forms of thehouses and the use of locally made red clayroof tiles. Inspired by a local technique formaking walls, some of which containchunks of brick and tile rubble, the lintelsare cast on site into formwork lined withpieces of broken brick and tile.

Boxing clever: Kazuyo Sejima in Tokyo

Vernacular tradition:Stephen Taylor in Gomshall

A carefully controlled brick skinunifies a spatially complex housing scheme in Tokyo.

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Credits Architect: Kazuyo Sejima & Associates, TaiseiCorporation; design team: Kazuyo Sejima, Tetsuo Kondo,Mizuki Imamura, Takashige Yamashita, Sadaharu Ota,Kansuke Kawashima; structure, servises, main contractor: Taisei Corporation; photos: Iwan Baan.

white colourant prior to firing, resulting ina warm pink tone. White mortar was used togive a ‘flat’ finish and the brick courses weremade thinner than ususal, in keeping withthe longer, thinner brick module.

Local forms and materials inspirea pair of Surrey village houses.

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Bearth & Deplazes’ extension to theGantenbein vineyard in the village of Fläschin eastern Switzerland adjoins two existingbuildings to form a small courtyard. Atground level is a hall where grapes arepressed, and above are wine tasting rooms.The basement, with eight mushroomcolumns, extends the fermentation cellar.The concrete frame is filled with open-joint-ed brick panels assembled using a robotic sys-tem developed with ETH Zürich. The facadevariation is intended to represent stackedgrapes, as well as providing solar shading anda stable temperature for fermentation.Internal transparent polycarbonate sheetingprovides protection against wind and rain.

The robotic system laid the 20,000 bricksaccording to programmed angles and inter-vals. To make the pattern visible from insidethe building, the bricks were laid so the gap atfull deflection was nearly closed. This pro-duced a maximum contrast between openand closed joints.

The wall elements were made in Zürich,transported to site and installed by crane.Manufacturing the 72 elements for the 400square metre facade in just three months wasa significant challenge, but as the robot couldbe driven from the design data, design workwas possible up to the last minute. A two-partbonding agent was applied in four parallelpaths for each brick at pre-defined intervalsalong the axis of the wall element. Load testson the first panels showed that the bondingwas so effective that the reinforcement nor-mally required for prefabricated walls was not necessary.

High tech brickwork: Bearth & Deplazes in Fläsch

Robot bricklayersare employed to striking effect in a Swiss winery.

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Credits Architect: Bearth & Deplazes with Gramazio &Kohler ; design team: Valentin Bearth, Andrea Deplazes,Daniel Ladner, Tobias Bonwetsch, Michael Knauss, SilvanOesterle; facade: collaboration with Gramazio &Kohler ; fabrication: Architektur und Digitale Fabrikation,ETH Zürich (Tobias Bonwetsch, Michael Lyrenmann,Daniel Kobel); industry partner: Keller AG Ziegeleien;textile: Creation Baumann; engineer: Jürg Buchli; client:Martha and Daniel Gantenbein; photos: Ralph Feiner.

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The project comprises the wholesale rede-velopment of an urban site on Seven SistersRoad, on the edge of Finsbury Park in northLondon. It involved the demolition of anexisting hotel, together with associated out-buildings and poor quality external areas.Seven Sisters Road is characterised by largeVictorian villas which give the street a dis-tinctive grain. They employ familiar archi-tectural devices to support residential life,such as bay windows and entrance porticos, while large windows and raisedground floors give a formal urban scale,writes Sergison Bates.

Adjacent to the site are buildings of simi-lar scale but of varying quality, with a relatively recent housing development to

Urban tectonics: Sergison Bates in in north London

Bricks and concrete rails provide a London housing scheme with asense of solidity and permanence. 10 • BB AUTUMN 08

Buildings A and B are each organisedaround a central circulation core, accessedat ground and lower-ground levels and witha generous window opening at each level. Amix of social-rented and shared ownershipapartments are provided within each build-ing. Apartments within building C are allsocial-rented and are primarily accessed viatheir own front doors, though a central stair-case provides access to two top-floor flats.

As an instinctive reaction to the paper-thin expression of much housing of this typeappearing in the UK, the interest was indeveloping housing for keyworkers at lowrent or on a shared-ownership basis that feltsolid and substantial. The buildings are of a monolithic construction with a strong

by the deeply recessed window assemblies orbalcony spaces behind. The continuous hori-zontal banding between piers is formed in in-situ concrete and this is returned to createthe balcony and roof soffits.

The repeated order of the tectonicfacade appears in counterpoint to theundulating and modulated external wall.The faint forms of bay windows and set-backs, more explicit on the nearby villas,suggest both familiarity and difference in away that feels appropriate within this urbansituation. And yet, the space between build-ings is charged by the subtle differencesarising between building volumes and intheir placement in relation to each other.

tectonic expression of brick and concreteelements, which represent the structure andgive a sense of permanence and weight.

With a structure of concrete slab andcolumns, a solid wall construction is achievedby combining a high-performance, aeratedconcrete block with a hard facing brickcladding. The walls are arranged in piersbetween full-height window assemblies andsupported by continuous steel angles whichare thermally isolated from the structurebehind. These angles also act as lintels atopenings and the support they provide ateach floor level removes the need for anymovement joints in the wall. The brick, burnt-red in colour with flush mortar joints, appearsas a monolithic element. This is emphasised

the east and a Victorian pub to the west. Atthe rear of the site, large back gardens ofnearby terraced streets provide distanceand privacy. Smaller residential buildingshave been placed into this quieter settinggiving a dense character to the interior ofthe urban block.

Three new urban villas are arrangedaround a shared space. They vary in heightand scale, but are connected by material andform. The two buildings at the front of thesite (A and B) have a scale that befits theirurban situation and are seen as a pair(though not identical), continuing the typol-ogy of villas on Seven Sisters Road. The thirdbuilding, at the rear of the site (C), is small-er in scale, reflecting its ‘backland’ situation. Photos Stefan Müller, Susan Vericat.

Alan Short is a difficult man to place. As an architect hiswork extends as far as North America, India, Australiaand southern Europe and it has won some of the mostprestigious awards. Each project seems intent on break-ing new ground, particularly in the early days of thenew sustainable agenda. As an academic, he was Deanof the Faculty of Arts & Design at De MontfortUniversity and he has now returned to Cambridge,where he studied, as Professor of Architecture. Hisinfluence on architectural education continues to beprofound. As a researcher, a string of research grantsand a list of international refereed publications andconference papers show him to be at the vanguard ofdevelopments in both practice and education, engag-ing in cutting-edge projects with institutions of interna-tional standing, including the BP Institute, the MartinCentre at Cambridge University and the Institute

‘I want to design buildings that youcan leave outdoors’, says Alan Short ofShort & Associates. Martin Pearce meetsan architect and academic developing anoriginal take on the English tradition.

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PROFILEo of Energy & Sustainable Development in Leicester. So it is with some awe and trepidation that I meet

Alan Short to discuss his varied career. But in contrastto my expectation, this complex, deeply intellectualman is both charming and generous, and our conver-sation does not follow the sustainable agenda forwhich he is renowned but instead we discussArchitecture, capital ‘A’, its history and composition.

For Short creativity is dependent upon knowledgeand skill. He is encyclopaedic in his references toarchitectural history, much influenced by his formertutor William Curtis during his exchange fellowshipat Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. There Shortlearned that compositional understanding is the coreskill and craft of the architect, and that this art,expressed through drawing, is unique and funda-mental to the practice of architecture. A radical

statement in a contemporary context where tech-nologies are often seen readily transferable, resultingin a fashion for buildings that seem to refer to any-thing but architectural tradition as a precedent. Itwas through his father, an aeronautics engineer whoworked on the Comet and Concorde, that Short’sbelief in architecture as a discrete art emerged.Human beings, he says, have not changed much overthe last millennia and through his father he gainedinsight into the complexities of very high-end tech-nologies and the limits of their application. Thenotion of making a house that uses aero engineeringas a point of departure seems to Short an exercise insuperficiality. He recalls a television programme inwhich a celebrated high tech architect held a brickaloft and asked why one would possibly want to makea house out of this ‘old fashioned’ material when

Above Alan Short (portrait photo: MorganO’Donovan). Short studied architecture atCambridge and subsequently worked at EdwardCullinan Architects; his offices since then includePeake Short, Short Ford and in recent yearsShort & Associates. Left/right Short’s most recently completed building is the Design Centre at BerkhamstedCollegiate School (2007). Photo: Paul Riddle. Key top section: 1 gallery, 2 dining hall entry, 3 brick facades, 4 tiled facades, 5 projecting elevation, 6 low-level recessed windows, 7 toplight to dining hall, 8 gallery northlight, 9 glazed doors, 10 air intake, 11 plant, 12 opencourtyard. Key bottom section: 1 gallery/circulation, 2 west wing entrance, 3 brick baseto stair and wc drum, 4 plain clay vertical tiling,5 plant room, 6 northlight to gallery, 7 zincdormers to art rooms, 8 belfry louvre ventila-tion exhaust turrets, 9 conical clay tile roof, 10open courtyard at entrance.

most often reported as research experiments into pas-sive environmental cooling, a need that is sure toincrease as inner-city temperatures spiral to createwhat are termed ‘urban heat islands’. Certainly build-ings such as the School of Slavonic & East EuropeanStudies at University College London, the first passivedowndraught-cooled public building in a city centre inthe world, are at the forefront of technology in thisrespect and test the limits of such systems. Equally,many of Short’s buildings also use brick for very prag-matic reasons, the UCL school’s mass masonry con-struction working as heat store to stabilise the thermalenvironment. But to focus solely on Short’s innovativeapproach to sustainability is to miss the rich historicalconstituents of his work.

Short has observed that, no matter how technologi-cally advanced glass becomes, a lightweight glazed box

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the stimulation of emotional response follows theempirical philosophy of the eighteenth centuryEnglish Picturesque movement, most associated withlandscape design. As David Hume argued, reason isultimately a slave to passion, not ice cold logic, and itis concern for these feelings that are a vital and toooften neglected basis for architectural decisions. Ofcourse architecture that excites and delights thoughvariety, contrast and intrigue was much loathed by thecontinental rational mindset that underpinned mod-ernism, and we can still feel uncomfortable for enjoy-ing those idiosyncratic oddities that go beyond anyfunctional pragmatic need.

Short is undoubtedly preoccupied with aspects ofarchitecture that transcend rational functionality. So itseems ironic that most has been written about the sci-ence of Short’s work. In particular his buildings are

lightweight advanced alternatives were available. Thisseems to Short as ludicrous as an engineer designingan aircraft to resemble masonry – it misses a realunderstanding of technology and runs intellectuallyaground in the shallows of appearance.

Short’s architecture, like that of Edward Cullinan,for whom he worked in the 1980s, belongs to a pecu-liarly English tradition. With its roots in Morris, Webb,Shaw and Voysey, this tradition is described byCullinan as ‘a shared and continuous development ofa way of doing things towards practical, artistic andsocial ends.’ Manifest in handcrafted buildings andarticulated through contrasting materials expressivelydetailed, both Cullinan’s and Short’s often asymmet-rical compositions are profoundly concerned notonly with the functional, but also the psychologicalneeds of the user. This focus on sensory delight and

is doomed to haemorrhage energy in winter or bake itsoccupants in the summer (BB Spring 2007). Howmuch more sensible then is an architecture of mass, ofsolid walls with small openings, the architecture whichconstitutes a northern climate’s traditional inheritance.Australian architect Glen Murcutt has remarked that,were he to build in the United Kingdom, his buildingswould require an architectural overcoat – for Short thisovercoat is invariably made of brick.

Short speaks enthusiastically about brick as a keycomponent of the English Tradition. First, the region-al variety of clays, manufacturing and constructiondetailing give brick a particular genius loci, a spirit ofa place, in a way that steel and glass cannot. If theearly moderns enthused about these materials fortheir placelessness and universality, today’s concernsput climate and location at the heart of a sustainable

approach to building that requires us to think differ-ently. Second, brick is an extraordinarily robust mate-rial, able to withstand the vagaries of the Britishweather, and is in many ways uniquely suited to the cli-mate. Robert Adam (BB Autumn 2006) points outthat it is one of the few materials that, with no main-tenance, looks better as it ages. Short in sardonicmood expresses a preference for ‘buildings that youcan leave outdoors’.

Third, in its finished form, brick embodies theprocess of construction, and each hand-sized elementspeaks of the craftsman; the maker’s presence isalways apparent in the final work. That’s no doubtwhy Philip Webb chose brick for William Morris’ RedHouse. The rise of the Arts & Crafts movement actedto polarise the debate between industry and craft,between man as a sentient emotional being and the

School of Slavonic & EastEuropean Studies, London, 2006 Photo: Peter Cook.Elevation detail 13 bays of10.5 bricks each are laid inmodified English bond witha module of 3.5 bricks inthe stretcher course: 1 caststone keystone, 2 adaptedstretcher course, 3 brick-on-edge, 4 handmade50mm bonded arch bricks,5 double-glazed window, 6 dpc, 7 weepholes, 8 100mm insulation, 9 cavity closer, 10 bondedinternal arch, 11 aluminiumPPC collonette LED lamp, 12 plinth in cast stone cillto take collonette, 13 formed sloping stone cillin three sections, 14 ppcinternal metal shroud tocover fixings, 15 cant brickto internal cill.

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Short finds delight, and perhaps a little mischief,in the tension between the pragmatic requirementsof a building and the possibilities of sensory engage-ment and visual exuberance. The Contact Theatre inManchester (1999) employs a passive ventilationstrategy, conceived with Max Fordham and ProfessorPhil Jones at the Welsh School of Architecture, thatemploys elaborate brick H-pot ventilation stacks, test-ed through wind-tunnels and computational fluiddynamics. Short revels in turning a scientificallydetermined form into roguish expression. The stacksbecome a delightful Gothic caprice as Viollet-le-Ducmeets Gaudí on a giant scale, and references to theflamboyant moulded brick chimneys of the Tudorperiod abound.

Short finds a certain rebellious individuality inadmiring unfashionable work, not least FrankFurness (1839-1912), architect of the extravagantred-brick Fisher Library at the University ofPennsylvania (1876). Like many Furness buildingsthis dizzying Gothic collage of over-layered expressivevolumes and florid decoration is unified through onegloriously rich terracotta material. Furness followedWilliam Morris and drew inspiration from naturalforms and patterns, a precursor to the early work ofFrank Lloyd Wright. Central to this ‘organic’

approach is the repetition of discrete elements, withminor inflections, culminating in an enormous over-all variety and holistic visual complexity. This way ofthinking appeals to Short, and he uses the term ‘ser-ial architecture’ to describe the effect of varietythrough subtle variations in repetition.

As for Wright and Furness the natural material forsuch repetition was brick and in Short’s work this isnowhere more apparent than in the School ofEngineering & Manufacture at De Montfort Universityin Leicester (1993). This pioneering building wasentirely naturally ventilated, passively cooled and nat-urally lit, running fully against conventional wisdom inthe ventilation and heating industry. Yet the Schoolalso builds on tradition, refering perhaps to Furness’sPhiladelphia Terminal for the Baltimore & OhioRailroad (1930), with cliff-like brick walls of colourmatched mortar contrasted with timber shingle roofsabove and the industrial riveted iron girder interior –material eclecticism in the extreme. But beyondappearances, Short employs a complex compositionalparti of repeated pitched-roof volumes, with each iter-ation slightly inflected in response to function, contextand orientation. The overall composition seems todemonstrate an important architectural rule: that withregards to complexity, plan and section/elevation

Martin Pearce is an architect and teacher at the University ofPortsmouth school of architecture.

should be inversely proportional. The lesson is appar-ent in two of London’s great Gothic monuments, theHouses of Parliament (Charles Barry and AWN Pugin)and the Law Courts (GE Street) where exterior com-plexity is underpinned by surprisingly straightforwardneoclassical axial planning.

Street’s Law Courts marked the high point ofGothic Revival public buildings in England. In theUnited States, the work of Frank Furness soon fellfrom fashion and much was sadly levelled. In this con-text Short finds it particularly rewarding that hisAcademic Centre at Judson University in Chicago(2007) has been so well received.

I leave Short’s office with the feeling that althoughtoday’s architecture deals with increasingly seriousglobal issues, we should not take ourselves too serious-ly. Of course architecture must respond to environ-mental needs but without joy, without the interest tofire the human spirit, we run the risk of making envi-ronmentally correct but morally depressing buildings.Short seems to deal with this challenge head on andfor that reason, alongside its many other virtues, hiswork rewards close scrutiny.

scientific neutrality of the machine. The legacy of theschism is still apparent in attitudes towards architec-ture today. It seems that this rupture also broke thetradition of which Short feels so much a part and, per-haps for this reason, his architecture refers back to theperiod just before the rupture in the mid-nineteenthcentury.

The Arts & Crafts, like the Gothic Revival, becamethe bête noire of the early modernists, who saw in itthe social inequalities of Victorian society. This legacyis with us today – how many architecture schools takeseriously the study of Pugin, Barry or Webb?Paradoxically it took a German, Hermann Muthesius,to promote the merits of Victorian architecture at atime when British architects looked to continentalEurope for their inspiration. Perhaps it is humannature to undervalue our finest achievements andlook longingly to those of others. Yet Short believes weabandon tradition at our peril, even if it presentsinconsistencies at times of radical change.

The paradox of the Victorian era was that, at thedawn of the modern industrial age, architecturaldebate focussed on a battle of styles – the timelessplatonic truths of classicism versus the empirical real-ities of Gothic. Architecture developed a theologicalimport, with John Ruskin arguing, in the The Seven

Design Centre, Berkhamsted Collegiate School, 20071 Clay tiling/battens/breather membrane, 2 pointing to verge, 3 clay tilehung vertically on battens, 4 roller blind recess, 5 ppc metal white soffit, 6 aluminium window, 7 steel frame, 8 aluminium profiled cill, 9 splayed cill,10 elevation stepped to protect glazing below, 11 plasterboard, 12 whiteppc reveals to lower windows, 13 windows recessed when not protectedby overhang (reveals and cills splay dependant on orientation), 14 fixed furniture between air intake units, 15 air intake plenum, 16 perforatedwhite ppc metal soffit to allow fresh air into plenum, 17 top-fired multibricks to ground floor, 18 smooth internal fairface brick finish, 19 cantedbrick cills with extended metal cill over, 20 cavity flue liners used as airintakes, 21 air intake unit with damper, acoustic baffle and heater battery, 22 300mm mineral wool insulation, 23 plasterboard, 24 vapour check plasterboard, 25 50mm tissue-faced mineral wool insulation for acousticabsorption, 26 s/w slats with 20mm gaps (photos: Paul Riddle).Opposite right The Queen’s Building at De Montford University,Leicester, completed in 1993, was recipient of the Green Building of theYear Award and an RIBA Award in 1995 (photos: Peter Cook).Opposite middle Philp Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath, 1859; FrankFurness, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1873; Short &Associates, Contact Theatre, Manchester, 1999 (photo: Ian Lawson).

Lamps of Architecture (1849) that the Gothic, indrawing on natural form, was closer to God.Architecture had an ethical dimension as a directrepresentation of society’s beliefs and values. Todaythe new green god of sustainability again framesarchitecture as a deeply ethical pursuit. Short’s workmay be at the forefront of the new era of principleddesign but he is far from humourless when it comesto green aesthetics.

Eladio Dieste was an engineer by training, but as Mies said,architecture begins when two bricks are placed carefully togthether, and few people can have placed so many brickstogether quite so carefully as Dieste. Working both as a con-sultant to other architects and as the designer of buildings inhis own right, he contributed a strikingly original and charis-matic body of work that includes audacious large-span indus-trial buildings and infrastructural projects as well as privatehouses and churches.

Born in 1917, Dieste graduated from the University of theRepublic in Montevideo, Uruguay. He worked for theMinistry of Public Works and various private companies

PRECEDENT Eladio Dieste’s adventures in reinforced masonryBrick in the service of ‘lightness, mysterious ease and concise simplicity, something like dance’.

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Above Church of Christ the Worker, Atlántida, 1960. Exterior view of the mainentrance and interior view down the nave, towards the main entrance in the northwall. The sinusoidal form of the side walls and double-curved vaulted roof meet on a horizontal plane. The slit of light separating the side and end walls reveals theirstructural independence. A brick stair leads up to the choir, behind which alabasterwindows set into the canted brick screen diffuse the strong daylight. Right Cítricos Caputto fruit packing plant, Salto, 1972. Discontinuous double-curvedvaults admit indirect light to the workspace, which is about 45 metres wide.Section Dieste’s drawing of a brick vault shows the reinforcement in special notchesin the ends of the bricks. 1 Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art (ed. S Anderson, Princeton Architectural Press).

before founding the Dieste y Montañez in 1955. Based inMontevideo, the firm was responsible for buildings inUruguay, Argentina, Brazil and later Spain – from whereboth Eugenio Montañez and Dieste’s families originated.

Many of the buildings make use of the slender shells ofreinforced brickwork developed by Dieste, combining thetechniques of vaulting found in Catalan vernacular buildingwith concrete technology and prestressed constructionmethods. Thin, hollow bricks are placed on wooden form-work and a mesh of reinforcing steel or prestressing cablesplaced in the joints. With a concrete skin they form a com-posite shell construction. Notches in the ends of the brickstake the reinforcement, allowing very thin joints betweenthem. At the Julia Herrera & Obes warehouse in Montevideo,for example, Dieste employed a series of discontinuous dou-ble-curved shells, similar to those at the Cítricos Caputtofruit packing plant shown here, to span 50 metres. The shellsare 120mm thick, of which 100mm is brick.

As architect Edward Allen notes1, Dieste’s structures fallinto four general categories: barrel vaults acting entirely in

compression, as in the roof of the Cítricos Caputto plant;cylindrical barrel shells which act in compression in theircurved direction but as beams in their longitudinal axes, asused at the Turlit bus station; ‘folded structures’ such as theChurch of St Peter at Durazno, which derive their stiffnessfrom the junctions of planar surfaces; and ‘ruled surfaces’such as the walls of the Church of Christ the Worker.

This work builds on the experiments with reinforcedmasonry conducted by architects and engineers in the nine-teenth century, and especially the reinforced brick shells ofRafael Guastavino in the early twentieth century . While con-temporaries such as Eduardo Torroja and Felix Candelaexplored the possibilities of concrete shell structures, Diestefound in brick ‘a material with unlimited possibilities, almostcompletely ignored by modern technology.’ Brick not onlyhad the same great structural potential as reinforced con-crete, he believed, but ‘the fact that this technology leads tothe predominance of varied surfaces tends to produce moremagnificent, or we could say symphonic, spaces’.

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The rational engineer was also an original writer on archi-tecture, outlining a position that integrates form, structure,beauty and function. ‘Is it not enough if we try to build struc-tures that are resistant, simple and economical to construct?’he asked in the essay Architecture and Construction. ‘I donot hesitate in maintaining that this is not enough. What iscalled simplicity is usually unjustified simplification, andeconomy usually refers to money and its movements... Thethings that we build must have something that we could calla cosmic economy, that is, to be in accord with the profoundorder of the world. Only then can our work have the author-ity that so surprises us in the great works of the past’.

Above Turlit bus terminal, Salto, 1980 (in collaboration with architect Nestor Minutti).The cantilevered vaults spring from a single line of columns, the lateral forces coun-tered by tie rods at the mezzanine level below. The slabs cantilevered from the vaultsare widest in the centre and narrow at the ends, reflecting the location of the greatestlateral forces.Right Communications tower, Malconado, 1986. The tower resembles a number ofcampaniles and water towers designed by Dieste, but is much slimmer as it does nothave to contend with the same live loads. Nearly 70 metres tall to the top of its concrete mast, the tower is just 3.5 metres wide at the base.Photos Yoshihiro Asada, Shinkenchiku-sha

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TECHNICALo

Hot topicThe BDA’s Dr Ali Arasteh explains the principles offire design in masonry structures and highlights recent research on the subject.

In the UK, fire safety of buildings is dealtwithin Part B of the Building Regulationsand in the European Construction ProductsDirective/Regulation (CPD/CPR) EssentialRequirement 2: Safety in case of fire.

The performance of construction materi-als exposed to fire depends on the type ofmaterial. Certain materials must be protectedfrom exposure to fire. Steel structures, forexample, could be provided with intumescentpaint, while the reinforcement in concretestructures is protected by ensuring adequateconcrete cover to it. Masonry elements aresomewhat different as they are inherently fireresistant and do not require ‘additional’ fireprotection. The application of any externalcoating, such as plaster or plasterboard, willonly enhance their resistance. As a result ofthis in-built quality, masonry responds to firefrom the onset. Thermal loads by and largehave a negligible physical effect on masonryunits. For example, clay bricks are generallyfired at temperatures of around 1000°C andare therefore not affected by fire.

Evaluating the performance of a structurein the event of fire is a complex procedure.

There is a reasonable amount of researchmaterial on modelling techniques, that incor-porate dynamic thermal loads on structures(exposure time dependent) and how theseloads interact with static designs. A referencelist is available by contacting the BDA.

When a masonry wall is subjected to fire itexpands on its fire-side or exposed face. This

Figure 1 Expansion of fire-side face.

Fire-side expansion

Figure 5 Movement of point-of-load applicationtowards fire.

As wall expandspoint-of-load application movestowards fire

expansion induces tensile strains on the fire-side face, accompanied by compressivestrains on the opposite side. This is showndiagrammatically in figure 1. The applicationof any external load, either vertical or lateral,complicates the way vertical wall curvature(out-of-plane deflection) develops with fireexposure time. Since masonry walls respondto fire loads from the start, the interactionbetween external loads and fire loads deter-mines the overall behaviour of the wall.

According to Eurocode 6: Design ofMasonry Structures – Part 1-2: Structural Fire Design (BS EN 1996-1-2), for standardfire exposure, masonry elements must comply with the following criteria:• Loadbearing – criteria R• Separating – criteria EI• Separating and loadbearing – criteria REI• Loadbearing, separating and mechanicalimpact – criteria REI-M• Separating and mechanical impact – criteria EI-M

Engineers and architects in the UK havetraditionally relied on tabulated values forperiods of fire resistance for masonry walls.

These are given in Part 3 of BS 5628. Anextended version of these tables forms thebest part of the UK National Annex for BSEN 1996-1-2. Using tabulated values is a prac-tical solution to a complicated problem, andis the preferred route in most if not all member states of the European Union.

However, it is desirable to be able to determine the fire resistance of structuralelements by simple calculations. There aretwo calculation methods in EN 1996-1-2: asimplified method and an advanced method.These methods are of limited use due to thelimited data upon which they are based. Forexample, for clay masonry units the simpli-fied method is for Group 1s and 1 units, andthe advanced method is applicable to a den-sity range of 900-1200 kg/m3 and a compres-sive strength of 12-20 N/mm2. Similar limita-tions exist for other masonry units.

In recognition of the need to develop asimplified calculation method, the BDA part-funded an EPSRC studentship with theSchool of the Built Environment at LeedsMetropolitan University in 2003. The aim ofthe project was to develop simple thermal

and deflection response models for masonrywalls constructed with Group 1s and 1 claymasonry units; to investigate the validity ofthe models; and to understand the effect onstructural failure of commonly accepted coef-ficient of thermal expansion and movementof applied load during fire tests.

The first stage of the work involved estab-lishing a simplified thermal model and test-ing its sensitivity to material thermal proper-ties against recorded data. Figure 2 shows thesensitivity of temperature predictions to ther-mal conductivity at three locations within thethickness of the wall, for two values of ther-mal conductivity. A best-fit technique wasused to achieve a good correlation betweenpredicted wall temperatures and actual tem-peratures measured during the fire tests, asshown in figure 3. The ‘plateaux’ in figure 3indicate the influence of moisture migrationthrough the wall thickness. This has theeffect of stabilising the temperature for a limited time, ie by the latent heat of evapora-tion of trapped moisture within the wall.

Having established a reasonably accuratemodel for material thermal response, the

next stage concentrated on a structuralmodel to address fire-induced deflections inunloaded and vertically loaded walls.

Initially, a fire load-deflection model wasdeveloped for unloaded walls. Temperaturedependent material properties, such as stiff-ness and coefficient of thermal expansion,were estimated from the best-fit of model with

Figure 2 Sensitivity of predicted temperatures to thermal conductivity, k Figure 4 Central wall deflection Figure 6 Predicted deflections from two models Figure 3 Predicted temperatures versus measured temperatures showing moisture migration plateaux

test results. Figure 4 shows the correlation andthe effect of a poor estimate of masonry coeffi-cient of thermal expansion (shown in blue).

Finally, using thermal response valuesderived from unloaded walls, the model wasmodified to account for applied-load effects(loaded walls). Two models, A and B, weredeveloped for this purpose. Model A ignoresrotational restraints at the top and bottom ofthe wall. The other more complex model Bincludes top and bottom restraints, as well asmovement of the point-of-load applicationtowards the fire side (figure 5) which helps tostabilise the wall.

Figure 6 shows that model B gives muchbetter agreement with the test results at earlystages (up to about 25 minutes exposure), butas the rotational stiffness breaks down the twotrends become nearly the same. Model A issuggested for design because of its simplicitywhen compared to model B.

As a result of these encouraging findings,the BDA intends to commission further full-scale fire tests to reinforce the validity of simple model A as a design tool for predictingperiods of fire resistance for masonry walls.