It's Elfin's Tuesday Architectural Appreciation thread! This week- Bricks.

Ignore the shopping bike and I give you my outside shitehouse…

DIESTE, URUGUAY

MONEO, MERIDA

Former Bryant and May match factory, Bow:

My mate lives there, his apartment overlooks the Olympic stadium.

St Bartholomews, Brighton

Can’t really tell how massive it is from that photo but this ones a bit crappy:

catesby viaduct:

lovely old blue bricks.

one of my playgrounds when i were a nipper.

🙂

Brick viaducts are great. I go under this one on my commute.

Lots of bricks, big bloody bricks but still bricks.

Walk past this going to and from work

hp_source – Member
Walk past this going to and from work

Is that the old cop shop opposite the Black friars telephone exchange in Manchester.?

yup, just always liked it

you mean the one round the corner from this:

I grew up in this beauty, which is unusual in my mind because it has a bare brick exterior, unlike most taller 60s/70s tower blocks which tended to be made mainly from concrete. And this one, Sandall House in Bow, is still standing having needed only minimal repair. I din’t live on the 15th floor though, that’s where a little girl fell from last year. 🙁 I lived on the 19th floor.

ernie_lynch – Member
A classic ‘brick shithouse’ which would make an interesting and yet not too challenging restoration project

Isn’t that just typical from you Ernie. You cooduv posted pics of some of Croydon’s lovely brick buildings, but oh no, as usual you have to drag things down, cheapen and denigrate them. 🙄

Legoland

I’m going to accept that actually. Cos there have bin some lovely creations made from Lego.

Like this model of the Allianz arena in Munich:

And of course James May’s Lego house:

But that’s enough Lego for now please. I’ll do a model buildings special edition soon.

Tate Modern (formerly Bankside Power Station).

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who was also involved in the Battersea Power Station design as in OP’s start – note the resemblence.

Gilbert Scott used to like to eccentuate the height of buildings by only having intricate detailing such as corbellin, dentil courses etc near the top. Note the brickwork detailing near the top of the tower.

Or something like that anyway. 😉

Dale Street, Manchester Used for it’s retro feel by Hollywood (Captain America etc)

Used for it’s retro feel by Hollywood (Captain America etc)

Anyone else just goes there to pick up hookers and rent boys though. One of my mates used to work tin one of those offices, and the carry-ons that could be witnessed… 😯

and that was during the day. God only knows whatits like at night

Anyway… here’s the detailing (and maybe the odd tree) on the top of India Mill tower in Darwen

The old fire station in barrow in furness.

More Butterfield

Rugby School chapel

Similar period to Keble College

Royal Hampshire Hospital, Winchester

Macchu Picchu lovely stone brickwork.

You cooduv posted pics of some of Croydon’s lovely brick buildings

yeah, clocktower etc is nice, if a bit fussy:

Holkham Hall in Norfolk. Built from ‘Holkham white’ bricks which were cast as replicas of ancient Roman bricks.

It’s a bit more flamboyant on the inside:

coming back to some modern brickwork from the Pixel House

A lot, if not most of the buildings in the North West were built with these beauties:

WWF headquarters

Some lovely examples here, but the winner so far is Harry_the_spider’s garden, very nice.

Edit: could be a theme for next week?

London Road Fire Station

The building was the headquarters of the Manchester Fire Brigade until the brigade was replaced by the Greater Manchester Fire Service in 1974. The fire station closed in 1986, since when it has been largely unused despite several redevelopment proposals. It was placed on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk Register in 2001 and in 2010 Manchester City Council served a compulsory purchase order on the fire station’s owner, Britannia Hotels.

Such a shame it was left empty for so long 🙁

Natural History Museum:

but the winner so far is Harry_the_spider’s garden

Awww… don’t rub it in. We’ve sold it. 😥 The new house and garden is much better but it lacks a big brick wall and my new sheds are only made of wood.

wadworths brewery devizes wiltshire shakespear theatre stratford upon avon i think this was shakepeare’s girlfriends house? i don’t know where this is exactly.it’s not far from stratford upon avon same with this building (i love the look of it/it must have some bricks 😉 a castle.somewhere near the n.e.c same with this one (apologies for not knowing where it is exactly) same with this.

A lot, if not most of the buildings in the North West were built with these beauties

Am still amused at the story of how “Iron” became “Nori”.

Good bricks, though.

Erm, I don’t think stone and timber/plaster buildings qualify, but nice examples anyway. 🙂

My mum sed to mention this one, The Space on the Isle of Dogs. A 19th century church converted to a music/arts venue.

And, of course:

(That’s London Brick, that)

i like the brick poop-houses.

there’s the taoist concept of ‘te’ (the virtue of the small) – which i think applies to them.

they might be simple, they might be small, but that’s ok, it’s all they need to be. i admire their honesty.

another contribution from the east:

There is a lot of quite exquisite chimney work throughout Chester on, I think, Grosvenor properties.

Queen’s School Chester, Chester using example of locally made Ruabon Brick
[/url] The Queen’s School[/url] by tilesoc_org_uk[/url], on Flickr[/img]
My old dentist’s.

My local library pretty much the only nice building we have

I like viaducts me, but this one I can see from my back garden, the Stambermill viaduct just outside Stourbridge

The Silk Mill in Derby, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and the worlds first ‘factory’
Sadly the excellent Industrial museum within is now closed

Beneath this
Roman Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool (Paddys Wigwam)

is Sir Edwin Lutyens crypt –

and under construction in 1937

It was actually the start of the cathedral proper and the whole building was meant to be brick but then came the war and money dried up. Later plans where scaled back to the concrete ‘tent’ thats there now (itself an iconic building)
Was planned to look like this the ‘greatest building never to be built’ (the frankly huge anyway Anglican cathedral in the background gives an idea of scale!) –

and back to Derby
The Roundhouse, first dedicated railway engine maintenance shed, now superbly restored blend of old and modern and Derby College’s Engineering department (I used to use it to shelter from the rain when it was derilict and I was working at developing Pride Park

inside the old turntable hall –

Stone aren’t bricks, bricks are bricks. Stones are blocks

The stone round this neck of the woods is so good there aren’t many brick buildings of note.

My favorite in this locale is the old Dalmellington Iron Works / Brickworks / Coal Mine. The result of a happy accident of geology – seams of iron ore, coal and clay sitting on top of each other. It was first an iron works built before before the industrial revolution had got its act together – architects didn’t have any language for industrial buildings so the original stone engine house looks like a town hall. When the iron ran out it turned to brick manufacture and the brickworks were built around the older ironworks buildings and a crazy steel helterskelter of converyors was built around the old stone building. Love it. The brick kilns are funky. And on topic – a machine for making bricks made out of bricks

But …. why do bricks need to be brick-shaped? The who point of working with backed clay is you can make bricks that are any shape you like

So – not architecture at all – but Field for the British Isles by Anthony Gormley. Made from brick clay by the lovely people of St Helens (including my brother) and fired in the Ibstock Brickworks

But if bricks can be any shape than walls can have any quality, you can even make a brick that can make a myriad of different walls and forms

oh its all got a bit deep and complicated now 🙁

But did someone mention kilns?