Story at a glance:
- Brick continues to prove itself as a timeless material that provides security and aesthetics.
- Architects are turning to various shapes and colors of brick for their health care projects.
Brian Belden has long been surrounded by brick. He started working for The Belden Brick Company in 1997 and is now its executive chairman and vice president of sales and marketing. The family-run business has been dedicated to the art of brickmaking since 1885.
Like anyone in the built environment, brick manufacturers have seen their fair share of ups and downs—from an economic boom in the early 2000s to the housing crisis and recession in 2008 to a growing demand for new products today. Currently Belden Brick sells to more than 230 independent distributors across the US and Canada.
While brick has long been a go-to material for teams designing for durability, brick is experiencing a resurgence and seeing new uses in some perhaps less than expected markets, including health care.
“Architects perceive brick as a value product because of its longevity and its versatility,” Belden says. He says the company’s many colors, styles, and sizes of brick make it a natural fit for areas like health care and schools.
Trends in Brick
The Louis Stokes VA Medical Center in Cleveland uses oversized brick in Ambassador and special shapes in Ashberry Velour from Belden Brick. Photo by Kaminski Studio
Thin brick products are in demand all over the US, but particularly in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, New England, and West. “It’s becoming more commonly recognized in the industry as a quality product that will perform,” Belden says.
Thin brick is also popular for its ease of installation, as you don’t typically need a mason to install it, Belden says. And it’s not a stacked product that needs a foundation or a brick ledge to be used. “You can use it as a material that’s applied vertically to the wall and is maybe a little bit easier for some contractors to use.” It’s especially popular for apartment and high-rise exteriors for its aesthetics, he says.
Sustainable Benefits
The Missouri Baptist Medical Center West Pavilion was designed by HOK using a custom blend of brick from Belden Brick. Photo by Maguire Photo
“Once you build a brick building you’re not going to have to do much to it. It’s going to be there a long time,” Belden says, assuming, of course, that the project was completed correctly.
With the exception perhaps of natural stone, there’s no greater life cycle than brick. “The brick will last the life of the building without a whole lot of extended maintenance. And if you look at the energy that’s used to create a brick versus other products over the life of the product itself, it really stands out as a good value,” Belden says.
Greg Heppner, a senior principal at SmithGroup architecture firm, says brick may not be immediately thought of for some projects because some may think of the brick of old—considering it perhaps a dated material from the 1950s or ’60s—but SmithGroup considers it widely for many new uses and styles.
“A designer has to look at two things—the context of a project, not only for the campus but also what’s the neighborhood, what’s the region, and what are the primary external factors that the design will have to address? In conjunction with that, when you begin to design the project, how does it integrate into the resiliency of the overall campus?” he says.
Heppner says one approach to resiliency is to design higher quality buildings in both construction and design, trusting that those will be better maintained over their life. “If brick is a component of that design and contributes to that quality then it could be an advantageous material to use,” he says. “A lot of the challenges health care facilities face with climate change is deferred maintenance with a lot of their facilities and infrastructures. That makes components of their campus and their operations susceptible to the impact of climate change.”
Aesthetics
The Winton Woods North Campus, designed by SHP, uses glazed brick to bring life to educational buildings. Photo by Todd Biss Productions
Brick is clearly timeless, even as various colors or styles come and go. While new colors, textures, and lengths are exciting, the industry isn’t expected to change drastically, Belden says. It’s dependable that way. “It hasn’t changed a whole lot. We’ve been in this business for 140 years.”
Oversized bricks are now in demand and may help reduce costs on large projects while also making a building or space feel more approachable. Longer, linear style bricks are also in vogue, Belden says, and allow teams to use one brick instead of two in places. For example, Belden Brick’s Ambassador style is 15-and-five-eighths inches long, compared to a traditional modular brick of seven-and-five-eighths inches long. “It provides a different aesthetic. Some people like that more linear appearance.”
The possibilities seem endless, as you can create shapes with Belden Brick to make an arch over a window or provide a grand detail along the foundation. “There are lots of different things you can do in manufacturing that allows for not just a traditional 90-degree corner or typical ledge underneath the windowsill.”
Belden Brick has also increased its glazed bricks over the past few years as demand continues for exteriors as well as interiors. “We’re always working on new colors and textures,” Belden says.
The company’s top two colors currently continue to be a black brick and a white brick, but gray also remains popular. “We’re starting to see a bit of that trend slow and go toward more earthy colors recently, but black and white are still at the top of the list this year for us.”
People are also more interested in various textures as opposed to monolithic flat finishes. “We’re doing a more rustic look on a lot of our products now,” Belden says, adding that texture can help make commercial or clinical spaces feel more inviting. “We’re seeing it more on the interior now than we used to in the past. People want to transition from exterior to interior, trying to keep the theme, and know a brick product is not going to get hurt by a wheelchair or a bed bumping into the wall.”
The Belden Brick Company is making significant capital investments in their facilities to continue to improve efficiencies and reduce manufacturing time, too. “I think that’s the trend in the industry—to be able to get the brick manufactured in a shorter amount of time using less energy.”
The ZGF-designed Cincinnati Children’s Critical Care Building expansion included a custom blend using 8521, 8522, and 8523 Course Velour brick in modular, norman, and special sizes from The Belden Brick Company. Photo by Ryan Kurtz
