Press Releases
As part of its role of representing the interests of UK and Irish manufacturers of clay bricks and pavers, the Brick Development Association issues press releases and feature articles designed to keep the construction industry, associated bodies and the public fully informed.
June 2008
Evolving Norms of British Housing: an exhibition at the RIBA
‘ a building should be to a city as a brick to a brick wall’
The BDA are principal sponsors of this exhibition running from 20th June to 20th July as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Click here to visit the LFA website.
Top Marks for Brick in BRE Green Guide
Brick’s green credentials have received the official stamp of approval.
The BRE’s latest Green Guide to Specification has assigned the highest possible accreditation A+ to every external wall it rated that contained brick.
The guide provides designers and specifiers with a user-friendly, yet authoritative guide to making the best environmental choices for materials and components. It is the industry bible for green ratings.
Why Brick is Sustainable
It’s time to set the record straight. Brick is big in the sustainability stakes. It not only looks great, it lasts for centuries, requires little maintenance, it‘s made from an abundant natural material, it goes comfortably with other building materials, it can be adapted as a building changes use, it dissipates all its embodied energy over its life in the average building, it offers high thermal mass, it can be recycled and, as recent research shows, it’s less expensive than most other types of walling.
May 2008
New Website
A stylish new website has been launched to allow building professionals and the public to get the best out of brick. The ‘Think Brick’ website www.brick.org.uk is packed with information, from great brick projects to technical downloads. Yet it is easy to navigate and very accessible. While the public will be able to understand it, building professionals will find the site an invaluable online resource. The site is an impressive showcase for brick, inspirational projects from around the world, and pioneering brickwork design and specification.
Brick Benefits
Brick not only looks great, it lasts for centuries, requires very little maintenance, it’s made from an abundant natural material, it goes comfortably with other building materials, and it can be adapted as a building changes use. Brick dissipates all its embodied energy over its life in the average building, it offers high thermal mass, it can be recycled and, as recent research shows, it’s less expensive than most other types of walling.
April 2008
Contract Journal
The off-site lobby has had a field day lately, portraying brick as expensive and brickwork as a dying art. It’s wrong on both counts as a report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has demolished the misleading claims about its cost. And it says that brickwork beats just about any other cladding material on price. Also, there are no shortages of trained bricklayers in this country. According to ConstructionSkills, there were nearly 120,000 of them at the last count. And the transformation of London’s St Pancras railway station into an international rail terminal shows that precision and skill in bricklaying are alive and kicking.
March 2008
Housing Specification
"Brick is Beautiful" was a slogan used by the Brick Industry in a successful advertising campaign in the 1980s. There are many in the Industry who think that we should run another campaign with the slogan "Brick is Still Beautiful". It is worth taking time to consider whether or not this slogan would be valid considering the very different context in which we build today. Whilst in the 1980s it was sufficient for brick to qualify as beautiful by offering an attractive, durable finish that mellowed with age, today people expect much more from a material for it to be considered "beautiful".
Cost Comparison
Brickwork costs less than just about any other competing cladding material - and that's official. An investigation by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) found that, against a line-up of popular finishes for the external skin, brickwork beat just about all of them on price. The findings are especially valuable at the present time, given that contractors are experiencing soaring costs and longer lead times for many competing cladding materials. "The RICS are the experts on costs, of course, so their conclusions are highly significant," says Katherina Lewis from the Brick Development Association (BDA), which commissioned the research. "It wasn't the basic unit cost of brick that the RICS examined - but its installed cost." "There is a popular misconception, fuelled by the off-site lobby, that brickwork is an expensive external finish," says BDA Director Michael Driver. "But the RICS study clearly concludes that brick is a competitive option for the external skin."
February 2008
Builder and Engineer
Brick is not only beautiful to look at. It satisfies many other criteria for an excellent value and sustainable external finish. There is something very special about brick. It is probably the only building material which, in certain lights, and with the right clay and firing and the right mortar, can be almost edible. That is partly because bricks are cooked in an oven in much the same way as, say, a Sunday roast. It is also to do with the fact that, like roast potatoes, bricks have a much closer visual connection with their raw constituents than anything else you'll find in a modern building. That is especially true of old buildings because their bricks will have been pressed from the local clay and burned on or near the site in temporary tunnel kilns by families of bricklayers.