General Shale’s English Pub thin brick provided the textured, authentic look that designers and the client was seeking for this renovation of the former North Carolina Music Factory into the new AvidXChange headquarters. The challenge for this multi-storied project however, was to develop a distressed thin brick product that would work well in the precast process. General Shale and LS3P teamed up with precast provider Metromont Corporation and concrete form fabricator Architectural Polymer for an innovation solution.
A custom pre-built form (developed by Metromont and Architectural Polymers) marries the varying distressed reliefs of the General Shale product to expose a larger surface area of the thin brick face and edges. By casting the distressed brick and also creating a deeper joint, the team was able to make the brick look less linear and more like natural, hand-laid brick. The solution not only achieved the aesthetic that the client wanted, it also was a model precast project – saving time and money using a highly-durable brick product. The new system included a custom corner, allowing installers to wrap the brick, making it look like a true brick building and they were able to incorporate the thin brick on the interior – for the first-floor elevator lobbies and the interior piers.
