Bring back the brick

The first library of Muyinga, part of a future inclusive school for deaf children, in locally sourced compressed earth blocks, built with a participatory approach. Our work in Africa started within the framework of OpenStructures.net. BC was asked to scale the "Open structures" model to an architectural level. A construction process involving end-users and second-hand economies was conceived. Product life cycles, water resource cycles en energy cycles were connected to this construction process. This OpenStructures architectural model was called Case Study (CS) 1: Katanga, Congo. It was theoretical, and fully research-based. 5 years later, the library of Muyinga in Burundi nears completion. Vernacular inspirations A thorough study... More

On the eastern edge of Yangzhou's new development area and east of the 2500-year-old Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, Three Courtyard Community Centre stands out from the surrounding newly completed call centres, glass office blocks, and farmers' villages. The Community centre's programme calls for recreation, dining, and meeting spaces for the surrounding residents and employees. The three courtyard blocks each feature a different element of a traditional Chinese garden: bamboo, stones, and water. Around each themed courtyard, brick-clad units congregate to form a village atmosphere. The architect's interests in vernacular public structures evolved into the typology of this project. Continuous roof profiles in local villages and red c... More

The meeting centre offers accommodation to various community activities. The complex of buildings consists of successive constructions, ranging from a 19th century school building and an old town hall to an industrial construction from the 1990s. The dilapidated storage building makes place for enlargement of the meeting hall. That way the back yard becomes an outdoor space for the party room. The gabled roof is replaced by a single slope roof, making the room and space higher, and bringing a better acoustic sound in the hall. The high windows bring light and give views on the nearby church. A central entrance in the armpit of the building complex offers the building an address. The entrance hall connects the different functions and spaces.... More

The Brick Weave House sits on the footprint of a century-old stable on an eclectic block of Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. Removing the original front walls and roof created a garden through subtraction, one which is surrounded by a porous, one-wythe-thick brick screen that both reveals and encloses the private courtyard and house beyond. Variation in ceiling heights and floor levels weaves together the two-story garden at the front of the house with the single-story volume at the back through a cascading section. The screen animates the garden and interior with dappled sunlight, establishing a visual connection to and from the street. Rectangular voids in the screen throw hexagonal patterns of light inside. At night, the pattern reve... More

Concrete Slit House is a contemporary concrete residence enmeshed within a quiet Kuomingtang-era neighborhood in central Nanjing. The entire structure and roof are made from concrete pressed into a custom mould, handmade from five-centimeter horizontal wood strips to remain in scale with the adjacent century-old brick buildings. The slit in the concrete creates transparency as it responds to interior circulation, and provides different programmes with differing interior heights & elevations, thus crates in upper bedrooms half floor volume shifting for its privacy. The living room spans over two stories, the dining area extends over one and half levels, and remaining bedrooms and studies occupy single storey spaces. Even though China c... More

Earth has been the most popular structural building material in the world’s history of architecture. However due to modernization in building technology concrete and steel have become the most common building materials in 20th Century. As a result standardized modern architecture has prevailed over the world, and specific characters of architecture in each region are disappearing. Living in the age of environmental awareness, it is our professional responsibility to explore new materials that are ecological and also not to be influenced by economy. Therefore earth is our natural choice of building material. We used magnesium oxide as natural hardening medium. It is extracted from ocean and land, and earth bricks are made by mixing it... More

Urbanizing the Rural In 2005 the Chinese government announced its plan to urbanize half or approximately 350 million of the 700 million rural citizens by 2030. At the same time, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin set up Rural Urban Framework (RUF), a research and design collaborative based at The University of Hong Kong. Conducted as a non-profit organization providing design services to charities and NGOs working in China, RUF has built or is currently engaged in over 15 projects in various villages in China. The projects include schools, community centers, hospitals, village houses, bridges, and incremental planning strategies. As a result of this active engagement, RUF has been able to document the transformation and issues of contestatio... More

Sra Pou vocational school is a vocational training center and community building in Sra Pou village, Cambodia, built in spring 2011. The school provides professional training, hosts sustainable businesses and is a place for public gathering and democratic decision-making for the whole community. The project started in an Aalto university design studio in spring 2010. We travelled to Cambodia and met the local NGO Blue Tent that was working with the Sra Pou community. They had planned vocational training activities and were in need of a building for them, which would also be the first public building in the community. As we drew the first sketches, the project became so real and the construction so necessary that we ended up collecting fun... More

These two new homes house two generations of the same family (A renovated Victorian House for the parents sharing a rear garden with a new Mews house for one of the daughters). The now grown-up family had recently moved out of their long-term family home and wanted these new homes to maintain some sense of continuity with their former lives. Two intertwined themes run through both homes, those of memory and tectonic expression. The memories of the family are used as a conscious architectural driver throughout both houses. Their social rituals are given tangible form within the design of the new houses. Typical domestic objects are distorted in material and scale to form a psychological landscape specific to the occupants. The daught... More