Facades with a Three-Dimensional Structure

The variety of facade finishes surprises no one anymore: even a very old building can be given a stylish look with the help of finishing materials. Yet brick walls laid up in colored or embossed patterns still inspire admiration for their originality and for the skill of the hands that made them. Where, how, and why relief masonry can be used in a modern country house — in today's review.

The architectural character of modern brick buildings is no longer tied to massive cornices, columns, and other elaborate elements; instead, it relies on a special type of masonry — three-dimensional decorative work. The point is that decorative brickwork creates a very interesting effect: the play of light and shadow across the wall. On a sunny day, the projecting elements of the facade cast shadows that easily change the look of the building. They also draw attention to important details and create stylistic accents.

Three-dimensional (relief) decorative brickwork is laid with bricks that project from the plane of the wall (sometimes at an angle). It is used to decorate friezes — the decorative bands at the top of a wall — and partitions, and to create belt courses; this method is often applied to window openings, balconies, and arches. Relief masonry is frequently combined with the clean geometry of the facade joints and with patterns formed by colored brick, in which case it is called patterned relief masonry. And anyone who believes this method was born in the era of mass construction with silicate-brick houses is mistaken. Decorative brickwork was a favorite way of adorning the Assyrian palaces.

The technique and features of decorative brickwork

To create relief, some of the bricks are shifted out of the plane of the wall, and these elements form patterns of varying complexity. There are only two limitations on the technique: a brick cannot be moved beyond the plane of the wall by more than 1/3 of its length without additional masonry reinforcement, and only high-quality solid brick may be used for such work. Incidentally, the elements brought out of the wall plane can also be set at a certain angle, which adds extra charm to the decorative facade finish.

To give a house a distinctive character, you can experiment with the joints between the bricks — making them colored, convex, concave, or cut at an angle, or "embedding" small stones or bits of colored glass in them.

Embossed architectural details can make the facade even more expressive. Pilasters and belt courses, fascias and rustication, half-columns and buttresses, bay windows and doorways, and a variety of niches have not lost their relevance as tastes and styles change. The finest examples of relief masonry have survived in ancient Russian churches and in the openwork European Gothic cathedrals, and designers continue to find inspiration in them, creating the most intriguing forms and lines in modern buildings.

Elements for architecturally highlighting the facade of your home:

Dogtooth course

a row of bricks laid at an angle to the outer surface of a wall; one of the traditional types of ornamental brickwork.

Runner course

a band of bricks set in alternating triangles at the top and bottom (zigzag lines); also a type of antique ornamental brickwork.

Sandrik

an architectural detail that projects beyond the plane of the wall above a window or door opening; a cornice topped with a pediment, which may be rectangular or curved.

Rustication

horizontal grooves in the masonry, 30–60 mm deep, set every 4–8 courses; they divide the facade into bands, creating a textured surface.

Pilaster

a vertical projection on a wall, in effect a flattened column; pilasters can be rectangular, semicircular (half-columns), or simpler in form (for example, strip pilasters or half-column pilasters).

Buttress

a vertical structure (a projecting part of a wall or a vertical rib) that strengthens a load-bearing wall by taking up part of the weight of the floor slabs. The outer face of the buttress may be simply vertical, stepped, or sloping, increasing in cross-section toward the base. Today buttresses serve more decorative than functional purposes, but they remain just as expressive.

Idea: a perforated brick wall

To escape the harsh sunlight at one of the noisy sites in New Delhi, India, the firm Anagram Architects built an unusual brick wall. Working with a fairly modest construction budget, the owners solved the main problem — defeating the sun that beat down mercilessly all day — while creating a highly original architectural composition. This kind of masonry in ordinary ceramic brick is well within the means of a country homeowner, since it does not require a large outlay, yet it becomes an eye-catching detail in the overall design of the house.