Alors que nous vous parlions des carnets Moleskine Simpsons à l’occasion des 25 ans de la série, voici que Lego dévoile ce set spécialement pensé pour illustrer la maison de la famille américaine la plus connue. Des créations sympathiques permettant de jouer avec les personnages sortis de l’imagination de Matt Groening.
Walls of dark brick connect the exterior and interior of this mews house in the north London borough of Hackney (+ slideshow).
Located next to the studio of its designers Form_art Architects in a traditional mews street, Blackbox house references the style of its archetypal brick neighbours but introduces light through a glazed courtyard and skylight.
“In contrast to the traditional mews architecture of solid brick enclosures with tiny windows and little daylight, this design is filled with light, but still respects the contextual language of a ‘solid box’,” explained the architects.
From the street, the house appears as a dark facade of slim Belgian brick punctuated with narrow horizontal and vertical windows, with the entrance concealed in an adjoining black wooden wall.
A lattice of wooden battens above the door enables daylight to reach a small brick-paved courtyard containing a birch tree and the entrance to the house.
The masonry that covers two sides of the courtyard continues across the wall that reaches into the open plan ground floor area and can be seen through the double-height glass screen that links the internal and external spaces.
A central staircase with a skylight above it allows light to spill down into the ground floor and divides the main living space and kitchen on one side from the dining room on the other.
A small landing at the top of the stairs leads to bedrooms on either side, the smaller of which is contained in a white box that projects over the dining area.
White walls and a further skylight at the far end of the living room enhance the brightness of the interior, which is intended to act as a gallery space as well as a home.
Photography is by Timothy Soar.
Form_art Architects sent us the following description:
BLACKBOX: Culford Mews London
The idea of the mews served as the starting point for Blackbox in more ways than just its physical location. In contrast to the traditional mews architecture of solid brick enclosures with tiny windows and little daylight, this design is filled with light, but still respects the contextual language of a ‘solid box’.
The design features of the entrance courtyard and staircase in this instance are key for the purpose of generating light into the heart of the house. As a result of the physical area given over to the courtyard, the ephemeral qualities created are ‘borrowed’ back so to speak.
This essentially refers to the light and views, with the staircase serving as a journey up Blackbox right through to the skylight. This can best be described as the layering of views and the ‘bouncing’ of light within the house.
Simultaneously developed as a house gallery and vice versa, the design is a continuation of Form_art’s work with artists and galleries, namely their current engagement with the Tate. The volume of space carved out by expressing the brickwork enclosure enables the inside to hold a pure white ‘floating’ box, suspended to further express the interior’s language of ‘objects’.
The project serves as a testimony to Form_art’s working ethos of generating work to test and develop ideas. This process provides Form_art with complete artistic freedom as designer and client and hence, there is an uncompromised approach from initial design through to completion.
The post Blackbox mews house by Form_art Architects
has brick walls inside and out appeared first on Dezeen.
Red brick buildings wrap around an elevated piazza at this education centre in Rwanda by German office Dominikus Stark Architekten (+ slideshow).
Dominikus Stark Architekten used over half a million handmade clay bricks to build the walls, floors and columns of the Education Centre Nyanza, which is located on a road between the towns of Kigali and Butare.
The original brief called for a sheltered forecourt to extend a small existing building. The programme later expanded to encompass various educational projects, forming a self-contained complex where teaching rooms are clustered around a courtyard.
Comparing the design to local agrarian architecture, Dominikus Stark explained: “The complex, in analogy to local building tradition, is set like a boulder in the landscape.”
There are no openings in the outer walls of the complex, as all windows face inwards towards the central piazza. An internet cafe at the southern entrance to the site is the only space that opens to the surroundings.
Narrow patios and brick columns create intermediate spaces between the courtyard and the surrounding rooms, which include a library, a language lab, three classrooms and an administration block.
Ceilings are made from thin sheets of papyrus, while wicker doors and gates were constructed by local basket makers.
“Local craftsmanship gives the building a simple elegance and combines the various elements of the complex to form a robust, clear unit,” said Stark.
A dining hall with one glazed wall allows a variety of different activities – such as talks, parties or even weddings – to spill out into the courtyard.
Gaps in the brickwork facilitate natural ventilation, plus mono-pitched roofs are angled inwards to allow rainwater to be collected and recycled.
Photography is by Florian Holzherr.
Here’s a project description from Dominikus Stark Architekten:
Education Centre Nyanza, Rwanda
The Central African State of Rwanda, commonly known as the “land of a thousand hills”, is rarely the focus of West European interests. On a private initiative, on the road in Nyanza connecting the country’s most important towns Kigali and Butare, a new IT Centre has been built. While the initial order was to design a new roof over a forecourt, after first discussions the idea was born to build a training centre with lighthouse character, with a future-oriented curriculum and training options.
In the agrarian structure, the complex – in analogy to local building tradition – is set like a boulder in the landscape. New buildings grouped around a central piazza integrate the existing building into the new layout. The individual buildings have no outward-facing openings, but are oriented to and open up to the centre. Only the publicly accessible internet cafe with copy shop opens up to the outside and forms the forecourt and entrance to the facility.
Inner courtyards and rows of columns form a filter between the buildings and the central piazza in the middle. The resulting refuge options permit parallel usage. Only the dining hall, which is also used for weddings and movie evenings, opens directly onto the main piazza and resolves the spatial boundary to the exterior. The buildings’ language of colour and form makes reference to local materials. Clay, the traditional building material, manually processed to form fired clay bricks, has been used for the whole complex. The reduction to three basic materials – bricks, steel, and wickerwork – as construction, protection, surfacing or decoration with function, recurs throughout the entire building.
A simple ventilation concept in combination with the thermal storage capacity of the solid brick walls provides a comfortable indoor climate. The way the roof structure is oriented to the inner courtyard also has a functional background: the gathering of rainwater, which is so precious in these latitudes. Because of the shortage of wood, it is not used for building purposes. Local craftsmanship such as the papyrus ceiling linings or the wickerwork of the restaurant doors and courtyard gates made by local basket makers gives the building a simple elegance and combines the various elements of the complex to form a robust, clear unit. The involvement of local craftsmen and others promotes acceptance and contributes to economic and architectural sustainability.
Project: Education Centre
Location: Nyanza, Rwanda
Architect: Dominikus Stark Architekten
Project Area: 5500 m²
Civil Contractors: Stanbuild
Functions: administration, classrooms, language laboratory, library, kitchen, dining room, internet cafe and copy shop
Area of facility: 2400 sqm
Effective area: 1000 sqm
Numbers of bricks: 575,000 bricks
Visible length of joints: 150,000 m
Length of papyrus: 24.000 lfm
Weight of chimney: 52.000 kg
Brick manufacturers: local one-man-companies, burned in a cooperative
Brick size: 200 x 100 x 62mm
Members of staff: Markus Seifert, Adi Wiesenhofer
Consultant structural engineer: Marcel Enzweiler
Materials used: Handmade bricks; steel, wicker, papyrus
The post Education centre in Rwanda built from brick
and wicker by Dominikus Stark Architekten appeared first on Dezeen.
The new Museum Luthers Sterbehaus by Stuttgart architects Von M is a grey-brick extension to the house where Martin Luther died – but it turns out the Christian reformer “actually died in another building around the corner” (+ slideshow + photos by Zooey Braun).
The “death house” museum extends a late-Gothic house in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the town of Eisleben, Germany, that centres around the life of Luther, a key protagonist in the reform of Christianity in the sixteenth century.
Until recently the house was believed to be the place of Luther’s death, so Von M was commissioned to restore the house to its sixteenth-century appearance as part of a larger project to convert the site into a museum dedicated to the life of the man and the history of the reformation.
“Today we know it isn’t the building where Martin Luther died; it was a mistake and he actually died in another building around the corner that doesn’t exist any more,” Von M’s Dennis Mueller told Dezeen.
“As it was the building for thinking of Martin Luther, it is still seen as the Luther Sterbehaus [Luther’s Death House],” he added. “We still see the old building as not only a space for exhibitions, but as one of the most important parts of the exhibition. It’s an exhibit itself.”
The two-storey extension is located behind the old house and is constructed from pale grey bricks that were cut using jets of water to create an uneven texture.
“The colour of the bricks was especially chosen for the project so that the facade chimes together with the materials of the old building,” said Mueller.
The main entrance can be found at the rear of the site, leading visitors through to exhibition galleries and events rooms with exposed concrete walls and ceilings.
A ramped corridor slopes down to meet the slightly lower level of the old house, which has been completely restored.
Photography is by Zooey Braun.
Here’s some extra information from Von M:
Museum Luthers Sterbehaus
The building which is one of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites was extensively renovated and extended by a new building into a museum complex showing a permanent exhibition as well as exhibitions presenting diverse and specific aspects and topics.
The basic principle for the restoration of the building were the historically documented reconstructions by Friedrich August Ritter in 1868 and Friedrich Wanderer in 1894.
The relocation of the main entrance and all other important functional rooms into the new building made it possible to largely preserve the existing basic structure of the old building.
Because of its clear cubature and structure, the new building that is connected to the existing one expresses itself in a self-conscious and contemporary speech, still it subordinates itself under the existing and its environment conditioned by the materiality of its facade as well as the differentiation of the single parts of the building in dimension and height.
Because of the mutual integration of the new and the existing building a significant and impressing round tour through the museum rooms has been developed – a tour that confronts the visitor with a diversity of aspects and themes of the permanent exhibition “Luthers letzter Weg”.
The post Martin Luther “death house” museum
by Von M built at wrong address appeared first on Dezeen.
A house-shaped tower with no windows rises from the roof of an ageing warehouse to create a new archive building for the state of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany, designed by German architects Ortner & Ortner.
Under construction beside the harbour in Duisburg, the NRW State Archive will become the largest archive in Germany, with 92 miles (148 kilometres) of shelving contained behind its walls.
Ortner & Ortner designed a 76-metre tower to rise up from the centre of the old brick warehouse, which is a listed corn silo building constructed during the 1930s.
They’ve also added a snake-like extension that stretches out from the north-west facade, accommodating reading rooms, offices and storage facilities over six storeys.
“In architectural terms the addition blends with the existing building, but without weakening the independence of either,” say the architects.
Dark red brickwork contrasts with the brown bricks of the old building, plus the architects have infilled original windows to create a protective enclosure for housing the archive’s fragile contents.
The building is scheduled to complete in November.
The post NRW State Archive, Duisburg
by Ortner & Ortner appeared first on Dezeen.
London studio Peter Barber Architects has added an L-shaped wing to an Arts & Crafts-style building in south-east London to create an advice and training centre for unemployed people (+ slideshow).
The new two-storey brick structure extends from the rear of the early twentieth-century offices of the Poor Law Guardians of Southwark, forming a quadrangle of new and old buildings around a paved courtyard.
Peter Barber Architects specified a sandy coloured brickwork for the construction of the new wing, setting it apart from the red brick and stone facades that have been restored as part of the renovation.
To complement the turrets and other decorative elements of the Arts & Crafts architecture, the studio added a three-storey periscope-shaped tower to the north-east corner of the complex.
There’s also a semi-circular wall recess with a half-dome roof, known as an exedra, framing one end of the central courtyard.
Balconies and doorways reveal the thickness of the new walls. Meanwhile, windows on some of the existing facades have been relocated, made visible by the mixture of new and aged bricks.
The architects carried out a full renovation of the old offices, which now accommodate the administration facilities of the employment agency, while the new buildings provide the training centre.
A community cafe is positioned along the eastern facade and can be accessed directly from the adjacent Havil Street.
Peter Barber Architects also recently completed another community building in London – a centre for drug and alcohol rehabilitation with a cantilevered upper storey. See more architecture by Peter Barber Architects »
Other community buildings built from brick include an open-air complex in rural Bangladesh and a hospice with gabled roof profiles in London. See more brick buildings »
Photography is by Morley von Sternberg.
Read on for more information from Peter Barber Architects:
Employment Academy
The Employment Academy is a state of the art training and advice centre in Southwark. It is set up to offer skills training and support services for long term workless people with the intention of helping them back into sustainable employment.
In 2009 PBA were approached by the charity Thames Reach to make a proposal for the refurbishment and substantial extension of ET Hall’s magnificent late Arts & Craft Poor Law Guardian’s building in Camberwell, south-east London.
Barber’s scheme is laid out around a delightful courtyard formed on two sides by a new L shaped training wing. Administration offices and a community café within the existing building form the remaining sides of the courtyard. The courtyard is conceived as the social heart of the project.
New buildings are built in a rustic brick in a manner which might be called picturesque. Thick walls facing the courtyard incorporate a dramatic inset terrace, window seats and a south-facing domed exedra.
Existing facades are handled as a complex patchwork of new and reclaimed brick, of new windows cut in and old ones bricked up.
ET Hall’s treatment of the eastern wing of his building is pretty quirky, all turrets and mini towers… so Barber’s scheme adds one extra in the form of a tasty little tower with an extraordinary brick vaulted roof.
The post Employment Academy by
Peter Barber Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
The facade of this house in the English seaside town of Margate appears to peel away from the rest of the building and slump down into the front yard (+ movie).
British designer Alex Chinneck created the installation – called From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes – by removing the facade of a detached four-storey house that had been derelict for eleven years and replacing it with a brand new frontage that leaves the crumbling top storey exposed, then curves outwards so the bottom section lies flat in front of the house.
“I just feel this incredible desire to create spectacles,” Chinneck told Dezeen. “I wanted to create something that used the simple pleasures of humour, illusion and theatre to create an artwork that can be understood and enjoyed by any onlooker.”
Located on Godwin Road in the Cliftonville area of the town, the house had been acquired by the local council and earmarked for social housing, but nothing was due to happen to it for a year and the structure was in a dilapidated state. “There were barely any floorboards, it’s very fire-damaged at the back and water-damaged at the front, and had fallen into ruin,” said the designer.
His installation reveals this dilapidated interior where the smart new facade falls away from the top floor. “I increasingly like that idea of exposing the truth and the notion of superficiality,” he explained. “I didn’t go into the project with that idea, but as it evolved I started to like that.”
Cliftonville is a district of Margate that used to be affluent, but like many seaside towns in the UK it has suffered with the changing patterns of holidaymakers. “It has social issues, it struggles with high levels of crime and the grand architecture has fallen into a fairly fatigued state,” said Chinneck.
In addition to causing delight when residents happen upon his intervention, the designer hopes to will draw visitors up the hill from the centre of Margate, where high-profile projects like the Turner Contemporary gallery by David Chipperfield are using culture as a tool for regeneration.
“Cliftonville is a very poor area referred to as being ‘up the hill’, and the culture and the arrival of artists hasn’t quite reached up the hill yet,” he said. “I was drawn to Cliftonville because it’s an area where the culture hasn’t reached and I think public art too often forgets its responsibility to the public.”
“I like the idea of surprise,” he added. “I never put signs on my work and I never give it any labels, so it does have this sense of mystery. It’s positioned in a way that you don’t see the artwork as you approach from either direction – you just see the hole in the top at first, so it’s a series of discoveries and you have to walk around it.”
The designer initiated the project himself and spent twelve months convincing companies to help him realise the artwork. Everything was donated by ten different companies except the labour, which was done at cost and paid for buy the Arts Council. The installation itself came together in just six weeks by assembling prefabricated panels.
The artwork will remain in place for a year, before the building is converted for use as housing.
Alex Chinneck’s work has often featured dilapidated buildings – past projects Dezeen has reported on include a factory near the Olympic park in east London with 312 identically smashed windows and a melting brick wall.
“I like the contradiction of taking a subject that’s dark or depressing or bleak, something like dereliction which suggests something quite negative socially but also aesthetically, and delivering a playful experience within that context,” he explained. “I don’t think it’s a negative comment on society, it’s just trying to give society a positive experience.”
If you like this, check out the Dalston House in east London, where a mirror reflects the facade of a house lying on the ground to give the illusion that visitors are standing on walls and window ledges. There’s also a student housing block hidden behind the facade of a historic brick warehouse, which has been named Britain’s worst building of the year.
More design by Alex Chinneck »
More installations »
Photographs are by Stephen O’Flaherty.
Here’s some more information from Alex Chinneck:
From the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes
British artist and designer Alex Chinneck has completed construction of his most ambitious installation to date after peeling the front of a four-storey house in Margate away from the rest of the building. As curving bricks, windows and doors slide into the front garden of a property that has been vacant for eleven years its upper interiors are revealed to the public below.
Thanet District Council gave the artist permission to use an empty property on Godwin Road in the Cliftonville area to create the artwork. Cliftonville is a district striking for both the grandeur of its architecture and for the challenging social issues it has faced in the last thirty years. Together with Margate’s widely discussed use of culture as a tool for regeneration, this provides an ideal context for the piece.
The completion of construction follows a twelve-month campaign undertaken by the artist to realise his self-initiated £100,000 project. Ten leading companies across British industry donated all the materials, manufacturing capabilities and professional services required to build the sliding facade.
Alex Chinneck’s practice playfully warps the everyday world around us, presenting surreal spectacles in the places we expect to find something familiar. At 28 years old ‘From the knees of my nose to the belly of toes’ is his boldest project yet as he continues to theatrically combine art and architecture in physically amazing ways. This project follows his acclaimed 2012 installation ‘Telling the truth through false teeth’, in which the artist installed 1248 pieces of glass across the façade of a factory in Hackney to create the illusion that its 312 windows had been identically smashed and cracked.
Alex Chinneck is a London based artist and designer. He is the founder of The Sculpture House, a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and a graduate of Chelsea College of Art and Design.
This project has been made possible with support from the Arts Council England, Margate Arts Creativity Heritage, Thanet District Council, Ibstock Brick, Smith and Wallwork Engineers, Norbord, Macrolux, WW Martin, Urban Surface Protection, Jewson, RJ Fixings, Resort Studios, Cook Fabrications, the Brick Development Association, and All Access Scaffolding.
Location: 1 Godwin Road, Cliftonville, Margate, CT9 2HA
Dates: 1st of October 2013 – October 2014
The post From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly
of my Toes by Alex Chinneck appeared first on Dezeen.
This apartment block in Seoul by South Korean designers OBBA has a semi-outdoor stairwell screened behind a section of open brickwork in the centre.
The Beyond the Screen project by OBBA (Office for Beyond Boundaries Architecture) is located on a corner plot in the Naebalsan-dong neighbourhood of Seoul.
The five-storey building comprises two volumes bridged by the stairwell, and its volume is sliced externally by regulations such as setback lines and natural light requirements.
“The outer appearance is a single mass, however, it is actually two masses bridged by a semi-exterior central stairwell with a unique brick screen to the front and back, forming an H-shaped plan,” said the architects.
The upper four floors are divided into 14 residential units in four types, arranged on split levels so that each apartment is accessed directly from a stair landing.
The brick screen allows each apartment to have natural ventilation on three sides.
The pattern continues over the roof and covers selected apartment windows that would otherwise be severely overlooked by adjacent buildings.
“This screen filters the view into the building from the front, while allowing for the right amount of natural light and ventilation, creating a far more pleasant atmosphere in and around a stairwell,” the architects added.
A roof garden at the top provides communal outdoor space tucked behind a parapet wall, while the ground floor comprises a parking place on one side and a cafe on the other.
Seoul studio OBBA was founded in 2012 by Sojung Lee and Sangjoon Kwak, who previously worked at Dutch firm OMA and Korean firm Mass Studies.
For more projects with interesting brickwork in South Korea, check out the perforated brickwork facade of a house, cafe and gallery building in Seoul or a house with a curved grey-brick facade that its architects compare to the body of a fish.
See more architecture in South Korea »
See more architecture with unusual brickwork »
Photographs are by Kyungsub Shin.
Here’s some more information from OBBA:
Beyond the Screen
Beyond the Screen is a new type of residential complex, located in Naebalsan-dong, Seoul. The existing condition of this residential neighbourhood is no different from most other neighbourhoods, with multiplex housing having held the majority.
The aim of this project was to offer a compact spatial richness for living, while finding new architectural solutions in satisfying the specific needs of the user, client, as well as contributing to the improvement of the typically generic townscape so familiar in Korea.
The building sits at a corner condition and is formed by a cutting and shaping of the volume by influences of the site regulations such as setback lines and natural light requirements.
The outer appearance is a single mass, however, it is actually two masses bridged by a semi-exterior central stairwell with a unique brick screen to the front and back, forming an H-shaped plan, with a skipped floor structure from the east to west.
This five-story building incorporates both residential and commercial functions – the first floor with a café and a piloti parking space, and from the second to fifth floors, four different unit types making up 14 different units in total.
From a user’s perspective, the design took into consideration the following four points:
Courtyard
Upon entering the building, one encounters the courtyard with a semi-exterior stairwell that provides access to each of the 14 units, with a unique brick screen to the front and back. This screen filters the view into the building from the front, while allowing for the right amount of natural light and ventilation, creating a far more pleasant atmosphere in and around a stairwell.
The sunlight that filters through the bricks makes for a lovely courtyard, allowing for an atmospheric transformation throughout the day, every day.
Natural ventilation
By splitting the building into two volumes, it allows all of the units to have three open sides, maximising the natural cross-ventilation throughout.
Roof garden
The roof garden is open to the sky, with a parapet wall at full-floor height, creating a private communal space for the residents.
Privacy
The brick screen walls, in their orderly staggered stacking construction, allows for privacy from the exterior gaze of the adjacent buildings into the semi-exterior, semi-public core of the building. This filter is applied, not only in the central core zone, but at specific moments where the building closely faces adjacent buildings. This adds to the privacy of each unit, while allowing for the residents of each unit the flexibility in ventilation, allowing each unit to breathe naturally.
The design also takes into consideration the client’s point of view, with an attempt to satisfy cost efficiency and profitability through quality design:
Area
The skipped floor structure allows residents to enter their units directly from the stair landings, eliminating unnecessary, dead public hallway space, and maximizing the area for exclusive use.
Cost Efficiency
With a limited construction budget, but aiming to satisfy all of the essentials for living, the design of the building and the units focused on only the absolute necessities, without being superfluous with custom materials and built-in furniture, but with quality materials and fixtures that were economical.
Uniqueness
In order to provide the client with something new and different from the monotonous characteristics of the area, their needs were met through a quality of design that allows the building to stand apart within the existing streetscape of multi-family housing, both formally and in function, resulting in a new type of residential experience and use.
As designers, there was a need to find a new architectural solution for the unexpected and unplanned, such as the following:
Equipment
It is quite common for residential buildings to attach and expose air conditioning equipment on the exterior of the building. In order to keep to the intended design of all four elevations of the building, spaces were allotted for such equipment into the overall plan of the building, as well as an application of the brick screen system for ventilation and air circulation for HVAC.
Ad-hoc expansion
To avoid illegal additions and extensions to the original design of the building in the future, which is a common practice in Korea, especially to buildings lacking a specific logic, there was a great focus in efficient spatial planning and design to allow for longevity in the initial design intentions and the spatial organization of the building.
Harmonized distinction
A unique design calls attention from its surrounding neighbours and residents in sparking an interest in a new design sensibility, and to form and awareness and appreciation for beautiful buildings and well designed spaces for living. Due to the changes of living patterns in the city, the number of single to double occupancy living units has grown. Rather than contribute to the increase of thoughtless and monotonous residential typology, the focus of Beyond the Screen was to provide new architectural design solutions to improve the quality of compact living through and enrichment of spatial qualities and functions.
Project: Beyond the Screen
Building name: NBS71510
Design period: 2012.06 – 2012.08
Construction period: 2012.09 – 2013.02
Type: residential, commercial
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Site area: 215 square metres
Site coverage area: 128.08 square metres
Building-to-land ratio: 59.57% (max. 60%)
Total floor area: 427.24 square metres
Floor area ratio: 198.72% (max. 200%)
Building scope: 5F
Structure: RC
Finish: brick, Dryvit
Architects: OBBA (Sojung Lee & Sangjoon Kwak)
Structural Engineer: TEO Structure
MEP Engineer: Wonwoo Engineering
Construction: YIINSIGAK
The post Beyond the Screen
by OBBA appeared first on Dezeen.
Kingston University graduate Aaron Dunkerton has designed an enclosed cavity brick fitting that allows endangered birds to nest in new buildings and garden walls.
Aaron Dunkerton’s Bird Brick cavity is made of five handmade, clamp-fired bricks which can be built into new buildings or garden walls to encourage birds to nest in urban areas. Birds can access the sealed cavity through a small clay entrance hole.
“Over the last 50 years the UK has lost over 44 million birds,” Dunkerton told Dezeen. “The house sparrow population has decreased by almost 70% and I decided to do something to help with their conservation.”
“House sparrows are sociable birds. They like to nest in small colonies of three to four breeding pairs in and around homes. However, as these holes and gaps are being filled up for better insulation, these birds are running out of places to nest,” said Dunkerton.
Each cavity must be cleared out once every 2-5 years, between September and November. The circular brick stopper twists out to allow the enclosed cavity to be cleaned out and must then be re-pointed in place.
The bricks were cast with the help of UK-based brick company, MBH Freshfield Lane in West Sussex.
Bird Brick was one of 20 projects shortlisted for the Design Council’s 2013 Future Pioneer Award, and was exhibited at New Designers 2013 in London last month, alongside New Designer of the Year Henry Franks.
Dunkerton will also exhibit work at London Design Festival 2013, with graduate design collective NOUS, which also includes Alice Kim’s maternity vest for plants.
See more stories about bird boxes »
See more stories about bricks »
See our coverage of graduate shows 2013 »
The post Bird Brick by
Aaron Dunkerton appeared first on Dezeen.
Dezeen archive: we’ve built up a collection of projects that use bricks in interesting ways for our latest look back at the Dezeen archive. See more bricks in architecture and design »
The post Dezeen archive:
bricks appeared first on Dezeen.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
