Monastic Minimalism
Architect: Caruso St John Architects
Structural engineer: Price & Myers
Services engineer: Mendick Waring
QS: Jackson Coles
Contractor: Harris Calnan
Brickwork: Liberty Brickwork
Doing exactly what it says on the tin, the Caruso St John-designed Brick House in west London is a rare example of an ultramodern, all-brick building that defies expectations of space and style.
Every now and then, a project comes along where brickwork not only features externally, but is also the major constituent of the interior. One recent manifestation of this rare breed is an ingenious and spatially complex house completed in April 2005 by Caruso St John Architects.
Brick House is unusual in two respects. Firstly, all interior walls and floors are in fair-faced brickwork. And secondly, built on a difficult, highly irregular shaped site surrounded by other buildings, the house’s minimal external form is seen only from glimpses, either from the pavement or from neighbouring houses. What has resulted therefore, is a house that is all interior and little exterior – a bit like the Tardis.
The almost complete lack of street frontage and the complicated site made it difficult to adopt a west London residential typology. Project architect Rod Heyes says: “The interior plan is completely separate from the typologies of the London townhouse or the inner city loft, yet it still retains a strong sense of dwelling in the heart of the city.” Indeed, if typologies are what you are after, then city churches more readily spring to mind, with their transcendental character in total contrast to the hustle of the city.
Arranged over two floors, Brick House is entered at the upper level through the facade of the adjacent Victorian terrace. The site’s outline has resulted in complex-shaped living accommodation that is knitted together by an all-encompassing use of brick to provide a consolidated surface. Comprising three bedrooms plus study and all associated living areas, the house’s spacious interior has some fairly irregular spaces that look out on to a total of three courtyards.
Brick was chosen not only for its contextual appropriateness, but also for its visual, thermal and acoustic mass. Heyes says: “The use of one material binds the whole building into an enveloping body, emphasising a skin-like character over any tectonic expression. The arrangement of the bricks within the mortar shifts as surfaces stretch, bend and twist, making them appear elastic.” This is particularly apposite where “cut ‘n’ stick” or special bricks have been used to achieve the many acute angles and difficult corners.
Structurally, the building’s load-bearing brickwork supports insitu concrete slabs. Exposed concrete soffits are finished to a high standard and when viewed with the brickwork, promote the primeval, enveloping feel the architects wanted – a sort of urbane version of the primeval church architecture of Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975). Perhaps more important are the benefits of exposed masonry’s thermal mass, now regarded as one of the best constructions to moderate our increasingly higher solar heat gains and avoid the need for air-conditioning.
What is particularly unusual about the brickwork is that the architects have resisted the modern preoccupation with structural expression. So, instead of English or Flemish bond brickwork, all 215 mm load-bearing internal walls simply comprise two 102 mm skins of stretcher bond tied together.
To complete the picture, brick forms the floor finish throughout, but unlike the walls which were pressure-washed, the floor brickwork has a milky veil that comes with using lime mortar. Brickwork is therefore everywhere – although unlike Lewerentz’s St Peter’s in Klippan, Sweden (1966), it is not used as a ceiling.
Minimalism was not the architect’s intention when this gem of a building was conceived. Yet it is difficult to see it in any other way, given the purity and almost monastic spatiality that has resulted. But irrespective of personal interpretations, Brick House demonstrates just how wonderful brick is when used as an internal finish, which was one of the reasons it got a special mention in this year’s Brick Awards.