Reflections from a BrickStainable Competition Winner

“It seems really amazing that you have already launched the second BrickStainable Competition bringing back to us all the exciting memories from last year. Since we left Washington, DC we had the best impressions about the whole experience you have offered us and we felt the stimulus of being exposed to such a great amount of thinkers from different disciplines. We consider your competition the starting point for a very particular research that deals with the component of construction as its basic module. In this way we can explore more “bottom-up” systems of producing space, rather than traditional “top-down” methodologies. Inserting context to these systems like sustainability and bioclimatic design turned out to be really intriguing to us.

Once more we thank you for opening this competition to the design community, pushing our research to a level that promotes contemporary design and finds applications to the latest tendencies of architecture.

In this frame we decided to take our ideas to another level and felt confident enough to promote our ideas back to Europe. Through this process our winning entry has been selected with 46 more in its category, among 256 international entries, to participate in the 22nd biennial of industrial design in Ljubljana, best known from its acronym BIO. BIO is one of the few major international exhibitions that have a tradition of more than 45 years of pushing the envelope in contemporary design.” – Flora Bougiatioti, Maria Eftychi & Aimlios Michael, Cyprus

Congratulations to Flora, Maria & Aimlios, Technical Design winners from the 2009 BrickStainable Design Competition. More detail about the BIO exhibition is available at: http://www.bio.si/

BrickStainable Presents at DC Convention, Summer 2010!

This past summer we were privileged enough to be invited back for the second time to present at the annual Washington, DC AIA hosted event, Design DC.

BrickStainable, in its 2nd year, decided an interactive panel discussion would be the best format to communicate our message and engage our supporters. The dynamic group included Potomac Valley Brick president, Alan Richardson, BrickStainable consultants, Peter Doo and Robert Busler (moderator), and a winner from BrickStainable 2009, Eric Haskins. (Eric joined us all the way from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Only a few short months after Alan flew to New Mexico to talk with Eric about his patent-pending idea, involving brick, of course! Check out our previous blog post on this topic.)

The 90 minute, 1.5 AIA/CEU & USGBC/ GBCI certified presentation was attended by a crowd of architects, students, and 2009 BrickStainable sponsors. We captured some of the highlights from this panel discussion for you. Enjoy the video.

Feel free to check out the pictures from Design DC on Flickr.

A Brick That Powers Your Building?

It sounds far-fetched, but it could be a real possibility in the future and it came out of the BrickStainable Design Competition. Last post I told you about my trip to New Mexico to meet with one of last year’s winners, Eric Haskins to discuss an idea he had. Well now I can talk about it because his idea for photovoltaic brick is patent-pending. Several entries in the BrickStainable competition utilized this concept—marrying clay brick with new photovoltaic technology—and Eric is taking it to the next level. Obviously, this idea is in its infancy—much research is still needed to figure out exactly how it could and would be used on the exterior and link to the building’s systems on the interior. Still, through this competition, architects interested in product development are working on the innovative ideas they explored in theory in their entries, in the real world. BrickStainable could lead to energy efficient systems far beyond anything we imagined when we began this competition and to me there’s nothing more exciting!

Connections Made at BrickStainable Lead to Cross Country Travel

While mingling with the winners of BrickStainable at the awards ceremony, I heard “Let me know when you’re in town and I’ll show you around”. Well, since then, I have. I’ve taken trips to meet with two of the winners, tour their areas and learn more about what they’re doing now and how BrickStainable impacted them.

The first trip was to see Rizal Muslimin at MIT. I toured four buildings including the new Frank Geary building where I learned how he uses geometric designs to create unique exteriors that impact the functionality of the interior and sustainability of the building as a whole. Plus, it didn’t hurt that the building is made of brick!

Now in his second year of the doctoral program, Rizal found MIT attractive because of its interdisciplinary approach to teaching; combining architecture, fabrics and other materials to invent new and better things. BrickStainable sparked his interest in a similar way—it crossed boundaries and opened up the thought process for using clay brick in other disciplines.

My second trip was to Albuquerque, New Mexico to meet with Eric Haskins. Eric had an idea to discuss and is working on a patent, so it’s top secret for now! We also discussed BrickStainable and similar to Rizal, Eric appreciated the creativity that the competition spurred. He loved that it allowed participants the opportunity to look at the use of clay brick in specific projects for use in energy efficiency.

On my tour of Albuquerque I noticed that the brick buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries are still standing and still as beautiful as when they were first built, but for some reason, today’s architects have abandoned brick in favor of other materials. I certainly hope this shift isn’t permanent because after my conversations with these two competition winners I’m more confident than ever that the applications for clay brick as a “green” building material are abundant.