World Tour of Heavy “Masonry” Construction Projects

Look at the countless architectural examples from history, and then study the truly riveting examples of heavy masonry construction from today. It’s this simple: Designing with brick can save energy and reduce fluctuating interior temperatures. 1st Image: The Queens Building @ De Montfort University)

Professor Alan Short MA DipArch RIBA FRSA (Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge and Chairman Short & Associates Architecture) delivered a fantastic keynote address at the 2nd Annual BrickStainable Awards Ceremony. An inspiring talk about the historical influences and styles of architecture, bio-climatic design strategies and building performance, and basic design concepts including: thermal mass, stack effect, and orientation were also discussed.

Brick allows you an unbelievable amount of design flexibility in color, size, pattern, shape, detail, and adaptability. It not only promises hundreds of years of durability, but it is manufactured from abundant, organic materials that are typically locally sourced.



Final thought from Professor Short:
“…to return to this chart (Image 2), there is an order of magnitude saving in energy and cost available through careful design. Only at this point should renewable energy technologies be introduced to deliver the residual and potentially much reduced energy requirement for comfort. Don’t apply gadgets to the top bar!”

Click here to download the entire keynote address.


Drawing and advice from Georgia Short, Age 7.

Students Can Find Sustainability in Materials Science

Juror, Vivian Loftness’s work at Carnegie Mellon University, prepares the next generation of architects. Today’s architecture students are learning to think about design, function and building performance differently than past students. Vivian pointed out that people don’t jump right to materials science when thinking about sustainability, but there are many environmental benefits of brick.

There’s an attitude in society that light construction (using glass or other lightweight materials) is more sustainable than heavy construction (using concrete or brick). She notes that architecture students should consider heavy construction when deciding how to mitigate high temperatures or day-to-night temperature swings.

Vivian believes that architecture schools need to illustrate the value of brick in a carbon-neutral society and provide opportunities on a consistent basis for students to design with masonry. Time will tell if architecture students pick up on that concept and create beautiful, long lasting brick structures. “Brick is expressive. It is a product that is not only exciting because of the aesthetic and amazing detail opportunities, but also because of how this material can perform,” said Loftness.

Photo: The structural spiral brick staircase at the top of Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon.

How Smart is Your Façade?

When they’re not judging the dozens of innovative BrickStainable entries, our jurors are doing really cool work of their own. Anna Dyson, juror and director of CASE, is investigating “intelligent facades.” These facades would be responsive to the environment with an optical “active” surface that would facilitate the absorption and redistribution of energy to the building’s interior energy systems. Currently, buildings account for 35% of U.S. energy consumption and 40% of U.S. carbon production, so making buildings energy creators instead of energy consumers, would make a huge impact on energy usage. And it’s even possible that masonry facades could be coated to achieve this goal. We’re looking forward to see where Dyson’s research goes in the next two years.

Cleaner Buildings = Cleaner Air

The innovations in technology never cease to amaze us! One of the BrickStainable sponsors, Essroc Italcementi Group, has a product called TX Active that decomposes air pollutants as they react with the surface of a building. A natural chemical reaction, photo catalysis, results in self-cleaning and de-polluting. Talk about tremendous design benefits for the environment!

Martin Vachon, a returning juror to the BrickStainable Design Competition is a consultant to the producer making best use of the product in application. Martin has been involved with the research and reporting system efficiency.

After a decade of research at Essroc’s Bergamo, Italy plant TX Active came to market. There are numerous applications for this technology including vertical, horizontal, structural, and more.

To learn more about TX active, please visit their website or view their product data sheets.

Photo Credit: Dives in Misericordia Church (Rome, Italy), Richard Meier & Partners Architects. This was the first application of the photocatalytic principle, TX Active.

Durability & Maintainability - Building with 100 Year Products

Historic preservation of buildings is both an interesting and timely topic of discussion in today’s design community. Potomac Valley Brick sponsored an event at the National Building Museum which brought together three great minds to speak on this topic last week. Carl Elefante, FAIA, LEED AP, Principal, Quinn Evans Architects, Rollin Stanley, AICP, Planning Director, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Audrey T. Tepper, Historical Architect, National Park Service all spoke about preserving buildings and communities in the green era.

Sustainable design practices present many challenges for today’s designers. Carl Elefante strongly believes that we can all benefit by enriching our understanding on the opportunities to renew and transform our communities, economy and culture. It is clear that sustainable design is transforming what, where, and how we build. “We have to get back to the way we were. We can design 100 year buildings,” said Elefante. He explained that our most energy efficient buildings were those built prior to 1920. This was when we built communities for people, not cars. This speaker truly engaged the audience in his presentation. “It survived people smarter than you, let it survive you!” Carl Elefante said this about tearing down buildings and walls. He continued to speak about the value in the existing building stock: economic value, cultural value, and environmental value. Elefante also urged the audience to “get into energy efficient retrofits, because this is where our market is headed.” Durability and maintainability is building with 100 year products, not products that last a decade. (As a true brickie, I love this!) He continued to tout about durability and maintainability, building with 100 year products not products that last a decade. And to me, this is simple and makes sense. Elefante closed his presentation with the following slide:

Sustainable Stewardship = Historical Preservation + Sustainable Design
RENEWAL & TRANSFORMATION

Rollin Stanley is passionate about his involvement in planning for urban growth through sustainable design. This was clear through the copious historic sites he discussed with the audience. His talk focused on the future of sustainable design as it relates to new and old buildings, and how historic preservation can lead to economic development. Stanley said that we can all benefit by educating ourselves about the value of preservation. We need to redevelop and design wonderful communities for people to live, work and play. One specific example cited by Stanley in his talk was about the revitalization of the historic city of St. Louis. This remarkable case study has the opportunity to be replicated in other cities. In addition to the economic opportunities presented through historic preservation, there are also many opportunities for tax credits. These tax credits have the potential to stimulate economic growth through the creation of housing and jobs. You can learn more about these programs at the National Park Service website

Audrey T. Tepper, the third and final speaker, discussed the inherent sustainable properties of historic buildings. These structures have a legacy. Historical materials can be very forgiving. Historic preservation means considering repairing, not replacing; retaining the character of the building when updating; and, understanding that new construction or additions to an existing historic structure must be compatible with the building. Tepper proceeded to show numerous examples of historic buildings whose character was completely compromised by the addition of solar “mohawk” panels, exterior insulation encapsulating the existing details and building character, and green roofs that need a haircut. “There should be a historic building under all that eco-bling,” exclaimed Audrey Tepper. Form needs to fit function, and we have to get back to the basics of what is truly sustainable. Tepper ended by stating, “Historic preservation is inherently green, and there is a lot of value to retaining the existing materials in a building.”

Throughout the discussions, the speakers referenced many credible sites. Here is a short list, for a complete list of reliable information click here.

http://www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/tax/ (National Park Service)
http://wbdg.org/ (The Whole Building Design Guide)
http://www.buildingscience.com/ (Building Science Corporation)
http://www.wufi-pro.com/ (WUFI-Software for calculating the coupled heat and moisture transfer in building components)
http://www.nps.gov/prsf/index.htm (National Park Service - Presidio)

One last note! We were thrilled to hear one of the speakers at the event mention Professor Alan Short, MA DipArch RIBA FRSA. Professor Short will be traveling to the National Building Museum on March 31, 2011 to be the keynote speaker for our 2nd Annual BrickStainable Awards Ceremony. We hope to see you there!

Masonry Materials Comprise 11 of 13 Wonders of the World!

Just out of curiosity, I thought I would find out what the Seven Wonders of the World were and of what materials they were made. Do you know? There are actually Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, of which only the Pyramids at Giza still exist, and a New Seven Wonders of the World, selected from sites and structures still in existence. Between the two lists, the Pyramids at Giza were on both so, two times seven only yields thirteen. Interestingly, of the thirteen structures, all were masonry except for two, the Colossus of Rhodes (from the original seven), which is reputed to have been Bronze, and Christ the Redeemer in Brazil (of the new seven) which is concrete. Of the ancient wonders, only one remains standing, the Pyramids at Giza. Except for the two non-masonry structures mentioned, all of the others are built of stone or brick. The two brick new wonders are the Great Wall of China and the Colosseum in Rome.

The Great Wall, except for the “guard houses” is primarily an elevated road to keep out the enemy and move troops and military supplies. Though occupant comfort was not a primary consideration, durability was. And, endure it has. Even through its degradation, many of the bricks remained. Now, having received its second, at least, restoration, the Great Wall continues to impress as much by virtue of the mere chutzpah that it took to construct it as by its technical accomplishment.

The Colosseum, though an open structure, was built to provide a modicum of human comfort while attending gladiatorial exhibitions. There has been much speculation about the canvas awnings at the upper level that provided shelter from the sun but, these no longer exist. When you are there today, the shade of the arched concourses and the coolness of the brick still provide considerable relief from the Italian sun.

Here are the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the New 7 Wonders of the World.

7 Wonders of the Ancient World
Pyramids at Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse at Alexandria

New 7 Wonders of the World
Pyramids at Giza
Machu Picchu
Chichen Itza
The Colosseum
Great Wall of China
Taj Mahal
Christ the Redeemer

There were many other contenders when the New list of Wonders of the World was created. Selected for features such as beauty and cultural value, it is notable that the majority of them are masonry structures.

15,500,000 brick … Sustainable … A Hundred Plus Year History!

The National Building Museum in Washington, DC (USA) is a showcase example of how the stack effect of masonry units can achieve natural ventilation and infiltration. Originally the Pension Building, the National Building Museum was designed to provide natural air-conditioning and light for its employees. Through the use of windows and air vents in the exterior walls of the building a ventilation system was created where hot air escaped through the skylights in the roof. The upward flow of air through the large central atrium would draw in fresh air through the exterior wall openings. The significance of brick construction cannot be overstated. The thermal lag created by the brick bearing walls helps to keep the interior of the building cool during the hot Washington, DC summers. And, the combination of the thermal lag and stack effect is how the National Building Museum maintained a comfortable interior environment prior to the installation of air conditioning.

These same concepts--Thermal Lag and Stack Effect are two of the six core concepts identified in the 2009 BrickStainable Design Competition entries. Check out all six design techniques utilizing brick to achieve sustainability goals.

Just this fall, Potomac Valley Brick (PVB) represented the brick and masonry industry by participating in the Festival of the Building Arts event hosted at the National Building Museum. PVB’s team partnered with United Masonry, a local mason contractor, to lead the bricklaying demonstration. This event was attended by thousands of visitors of all ages. A good time was had by all. Ellen Jacknain, coordinator of the Festival of the Building Arts noted, “As always, bricklaying was one of our most popular activities. Thank you so much to (Potomac Valley Brick) Dave and all of the workers for their expertise and patience in working with all the young visitors. The event’s general atmosphere of learning and fun was remarkable – due in large part to the enthusiasm of demonstrators like you.”

And we’ll be back at the National Building Museum in March. It will be the venue for the 2nd Annual BrickStainble Awards Celebration for the second year in a row. We can’t wait to return to this fabulous brick structure for another night of sustainability celebration!

What’s your favorite feature of the National Building Museum?

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!

Escaping the Heat on a Hot Summer Day

It was a hot and humid day today in Washington, DC, almost 100º with 40% humidity. We decided to escape the city’s summer heat by retreating to a presentation by BrickStainable’s architecture and sustainability consultant, Peter Doo. The comfort and cooling sensation we felt when we first entered the National Building Museum was undeniably refreshing. Over 15 million bricks contribute to the buildings thermal mass and were integral in the construction plans to promote air circulation before the time of mechanical heating and cooling systems.

We sat amongst a crowd of at least 50 architects and designers as Peter talked about how the construction materials we choose affect the performance of a building. He continued, “After industrialization we moved towards centralized air-conditioning and our architectural expressions were not performance based.” As the green movement progresses, it is likely designers will re-think the materials they choose and their building envelopes. There will be a transformation in design; and sustainability – which is not a fad – will have a stylistic approach.

Brick is nature’s oldest building block. Designs by Louis Kahn and Frank Lloyd Wright will always be remembered for their integration of masonry. Peter not only credited the aforementioned architects, but also the designers (both winners and entrants) from BrickStainable 2009. The sustainable applications for masonry are abundant!

Sensory, memory… hot summer days, cool brick buildings. Now that’s refreshing!