@@stewarthicks Throughout my civil engineering undergrad course, I used to get stoned with my friends on college campus and we used to do these kind of silly stuff. You reminded me of my college days. Thanks :)
Last July, UNESCO declared a church by Architect Eladio Dieste, here in Uruguay, a world heritage site. Dieste has been called "master of brick"; his most emblematic works take this material to its maximum lightness in the creation of amazing structures. I like to think that he somehow knew how to make bricks be what they want and deserve to be.
😂 I am a Tile-setter and have had this very talk with customers… Things do have a tendency to not doing certain things. Glass tile does not want to be glued to anything… they vibrate at such high frequency that it shakes itself loose. That’s why silicon is used successfully. 😂 We mechanics do talk to our material. Sometime they are the only thing to talk to. Construction can be lonely 😞
Maybe the materiel is speaking to you because you're there to listen? Maybe you're the one bearing witness to variables that would take people lifetimes and many perspectives to understand or a book. But Either way. You've seen into a corner that makes up an important part of reality. Homes are on the decline or maybe it's better to say buildings. But people can build but regulations nowadays make diy illegal so the alternative is homeless, rent, or struggling until you succeeded in getting A Home not The home.
@@dandywaysofliving Yes, Indeed. I was a little miffed at this video till the end when the farce was lifted. 😊 We do have the ability to hear, with uncanny depth, into the world of rock and sand. In fact if one were to make the material aware of your intentions, the pieces will let you know theirs by any means they may muster. I have had tiles leave my hand by crazy means. Some that will not come out of the box and others that plummet to the floor and smash… all without explanation. The whole world is alive with intention and I now see why the Wind was given Deification.
@@StephenRansom47 I skateboard and I use 2 stones I found near a couples grave by the side of the road. I ride against traffic. I don't trust 20+ cars passing behind me with my only defense being my eyes behind my head (I have none) and the thin white strip of paint on the road. . We'll it's been 4 years now and I have forgotten em in parking lots, houses and bus stops but somehow. I always get em back. The last time I lost em I bet em. I didn't wanna lose em. But I forgot em by the bus stop. I decided fuck it new rocks. We'll I lost 1 of them new ones so I decided to see if the classics were still around. Yup. I have em and I'm happy. But I see them as blessings. I carry 2 stones I found near 2 graves on the side of the road. Probably bicyclist. But I read the names. The graves been removed but it was a couple. They died because the road said ride with with traffic. Basically saying. Yea trust them cars and strangers not to kill you when you have 30+ people passing u by. These stones have helped me and I love em. I use em for more wind resistance to propel me forward or as brakes as I roll down hill. When I'm bored they're maracas and sometimes I can communicate with the birds by clicking em. It's funny when I went to get em back. The birds knew and guarded my stones for me. When I showed up it was like they knew I was there for that reason. The universe is a funny place. Just being in this thread makes me wonder how much Power people have and how much the universe wants to see people smile. Yea shit might seem iffy but considering a comment left today might not be seen until 3 months from now or 10years makes u think how even right now. We hold infinite power. I know this is about tile and bricks but I stand by my reason. I considered 3d printing my stones in mass as a sellable item. But nah. I'll chill here and let the universe give everyone their own hope. Lol I'm just happy to experience others perspectives. Keep it going 😎🤟💫
@@dandywaysofliving That’s a fantastic story and example of just what I am talking about. Who, or what, is empowering these events is irrelevant. Noticing that power is the event. Your thoughts and those of the fallen cyclists as well as those who placed the rocks, or stood near them in mourning … those mental forces give rise to extraordinary powers. I had done an illustration in the July before 9/11… the drawing had the Twin Towers in the background of a youth who’s tattoos show “The Class of 2001” being dragged underwater by an Anchor. It still haunts me. That same month three films also had interesting pre-cognition… The first Spider-Man movie, Final Fantasy - The Spirt Within and Metropolis. The world is filled with mystery… believing that, makes it so. Keep Seeing that. 👍
The beauty of traditional brick construction it’s that it tells the story of how the building was built. It adds the human scale to the building. This is what is lacking on “modern” brick design, where it’s just a veneer and they are put in a bunch, so it ends up looking or “feeling” fake.
I think that 'modern' brick buildings can be good, but I understand what you mean. It takes an understanding of traditional brick construction to do it well, you can't just slap it on as a veneer and expect it to be good. Unfortunately that is what a lot of people do.
But of course when describing how the bricks tell a story, we must remember that we don’t mean that literally. As, of course, these are bricks, and therefore not sentient. They can’t actually talk to you.
The idea of using brick for anything much over 5 storeys is strange to me (apart from old utilitarian / industrial / monolithic buildings like chimney towers). Bricks only make sense if they can be seen up close where the grain and craftsmanship of brick construction can be utilised and appreciated. Otherwise you might as well use glass and steel.
My wife, a Chicagoan, walked in right after I started this and said, “What in the world are you watching? 🤷🏻♀️” She thought that you were purposefully making jokes throughout the two minutes that she sat through. However, I came to your defense and she says that she now understands that you were being serious the entire time.
“I cannot stress this enough. This in not an arch”.😀 When I was a kid, growing up in the South, my father was a traveling salesman who sold roofing products to small lumber yards in South Carolina. This was in the late 1950s. I would occasionally go with him and, yes, it was more than a little like walking into a Walker Evans photograph, though at the time I had no idea who Walker Evans was. One of the places he went was a brickyard. It was small operation this several small kilns and pallets of unfired bricks. The guy that owned it showed me around and at the end he gave me a raw unfired brick. I had it for many years, but, let’s face it, unfired brick aren’t that permanent.
When you put an engineer and an architect in a room: - "So do the bricks want to do that?" "It's clay Matthew, they don't want anything" - "I don't think they like that..." "Well I wouldn't BUT I'M HUMAN!"
Love bricks. Brick breed creativity, and give buildings a warmth and human scale that few other materials can muster. I wish that modern architecture could find more creativity with brickwork than I've currently seen. Fun video!
Agreed. It's a shame that it's not utilized in a more creative way in modern construction. I also find it disappointing that most brick today is only one layer thick, attached to a wooden structure underneath. It's used as nothing more than decoration, instead of being the walls that the interior is built to. I'm lucky enough to livein a older house with brick walls that are a foot thick. That's how brick is supposed to be used; to build a structure, not just adorne it.
@@wirelesmike73 And those walls are... Resistant to a lot of things. I've seen brickwork bunkers. That shit literally needs to be detonated from the inside to be destroyed effectively. The outside is literally bomb proof
Finally,Finally someone who understands bricks and their silent conversations. I was born and raised for five years in aFLL Wright modified prarie style house ... The bricks I was told were called Roman style long and narrow.And that house had a dignified, no nonsense attitude about it, after it was finished about several hundred bricks were stacked in the rear yard, and my cousins and neighbor kids would use them to try and build walls We were never successful because we did not know the idea of a keystone at the top center and the use of mortar to bind the bricks and hold them level, We could get to four feet or so and collapse would happen. One day an older gent stopped to visit my grand pop saw what we were trying to do and explained we needed a keystone. With some cardboard boxes he showed how to make an arch form to hold bricks and when the key brick was installed the arch held
Loved this, not only for the information but for the humor! I grew up in a brick house in NYC. It was built as a church in 1831, but converted into a house just a few years later in 1842. The walls were laid up in English bond -- one row of headers alternating with one row of stretchers throughout. It was Greek Revival, so it didn't have arches of any sort -- just brownstone lintels over the windows and doors. It was a very austere but beautifully-proportioned building.
Beware the brick house with too much of a strong personality. We lived in a house that took it to the level of stubbornness, if not arrogance. Also, it would not listen to anyone, and positively bristled at constructive criticism. I felt it could be manipulative, especially on the weekends when friends came over. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of issues to work out over that house and it’s haughty bricks.
Stewart's delivery and dead-pan tone makes him not only a comedic genius, but his attention to detail and love of architecture and architects makes people WANT to watch his videos!! If you haven't seen his "Leaks" video, you can absolutely see why I HAD to sub his channel!! I seriously wish he were one of my profs!!!
constantly insisting that an inanimate object has feelings while in the presence of a professional is by far one of the best things i've seen this year.
There was a time in my town when the local government offered free red bricks too anyone opening a church. So you can find old buildings on different church areas that you can tell are the old church house because of the red bricks. There’s both a Catholic Church and a Buddhist temple close to each other that have old buildings made from those red bricks.
5:46 re Coins. The French word for 'corner' is 'coin' (IPA kwɛ̃) from the Latin 'cuneus'. A corner is masculine in French. (Probably more information than anyone needs or wants). Great video as always. Thanks.
I was wondering how he spelled it, coign or quoin, and never even considered coin! Quoin is a good one to remember for scrabble when your letter tray is unhealthy.
When I saw the title I got excited that you might talk about how brick details explain things about buildings, like Time Team's Jonathan Foyle who can date a building by its brickwork. Instead I got a light-hearted tour of Chicago which was most enjoyable. I went to the College of William and Mary, which is composed universally of brick buildings. A large percentage of them, even the brand-new ones, are laid in Flemish bond with black-glazed headers, which creates a nice basketwork effect and ties in with the historic tourist district. In watching Time Team I learned that the recipe for the glaze for black headers has been lost, so maybe the bricks are laughing gently and talking in that way!
First off, I love your channel. One video was recommended to me and I ended up watching every second of your channel in the past week. Second, it always strikes me about bricks how cost (perhaps also weight and relative manufacture difficulty), in comparison to other materials, is their only negative feature. They create more jobs, they last longer, are gorgeous, and generally are nicer to throw through windows than chunks of vinyl siding.
What Belton said. Also; bricks are gorgeous, especially reclaimed bricks (there I said it). Also as well; Will Quam is hilarious and should have his own brick channel. I would love to take some of your classes Stewart, actually I would really enjoy a history-of bricks lecture from Will Quam if such a thing existed.
In some parts of the world bricks were actually an affordable building material, more so than wood... Denmark has a lot of clay, but not much in terms of great forests, so brick buildings were really the go-to option until the advent of affordable concrete for single-family homes. (And many Danes who don't understand the history of US home building find it odd that so many houses are made from wood; here that's mainly for temporary buildings or perhaps for a simple weekend home. Which is a bit stupid, because wood is obviously a great material, as are bricks.)
@@BobbyJHeupel Imported stuff is always going to cost more - And you literally just have to go across the border from Denmark to Sweden to see loads and loads of wooden buildings, simply because they have the large forests to supply the raw material. There's a reason buildings look different in different countries, and it's often quite prosaic. We couldn't build in marble or dressed stone in Denmark, because all we have is soil, clay and field stones. (And bits of wood, so we could do timber-framed buildings with panels of wattle and daub, and later bricks.) Vernacular building styles are fascinating because they tell us a story about what was available in an area a few hundred years ago. Ditto for cooking and really most parts of culture and tradition in various countries.
Hi, I'm a climber and especially in the recent pandemic I noticed that you guys are building buildings and bridges with all the wrong climbing difficulties. Most are build in a way that makes it way too hard to climb them and then there are some that are way to easy to climb. I would like to request that you, as a profession I mean, take better care of the climbing grades of your buildings and especially bridges (because climbing on bridges is not that problematic in a legal sense). I would really like to see some that are difficult but not too difficult. Maybe even have different routes for more or less advanced climbers. Maybe you could talk with the route setters in your local climbing gym about that? It would really improve the world. Thank you very much!
Try hooks on the underside of horizontal precast, a good workout. Also, check out Fred Dibnah and his use of advanced pro for brickwork: ua-cam.com/video/F04dGK1_wYA/v-deo.html NB: Alex has nothing on Fred!
Y'all have some lazy bricks up there in Chicago just sitting around. I put my bricks to work. Just yesterday I used 2 bricks to jack up my generator to drain the gas out , after I finally got my power back from hurricane Ida. I also have a couple of bricks holding a car up in my front yard. Yup, here in Louisiana we work lazy bricks.
Nah man, not all Chicagoian bricks are lazy. Used my bricks to jack up my car the other day because it's too low to fit my normal jack underneath without driving onto a hardened object like a brick
Thank You to all the events that lead to Stewart Hicks picking up this sense of humour and to become an architect and making this UA-cam Channel and gracing us mortals with these visual and audible journeys from looking at lost Architecture to talking to freaking bricks. I am sick of panel discussions and presentations that are available in abundance on UA-cam by Universities and Architects. Finally a dude goofing around with Architecture. Thank You again for this. Please O please more of this.
I’m 53 and always lived in an timber clad home until recently , I’ve always bought an fixer upper and what I’ve discovered is that your flexibility to change things are diminished without lots of work so l guess if done right the first time brick is timeless . I’m also in the decision part of choosing a brick for an extension and it is daunting the choice of brick on the market.
It’s so cute the way you are talking about wishes and feelings of the bricks and equally cute the way that he responds to this misunderstanding of yours 🥰
nothing better than someone who has been immersed in his craft so deeply for so long that it has developed a seed of madness within him. only the best of craftspeople can hope to hear the whispers.
Keep up the good work, and your students are fortunate to have a professor explaining concepts in a compelling format. Writer, director, producer, explorer, historian, and architect, you are a talent!
I feel like he’d love to come to London - so many interesting brick arches going on.... especially when a railway arch makes a turn - the underside looks like a ‘brick wave’
As I walk in my neighborhood in Chicago I'm continually amazed with the decorative work done just with brick, well, a few stones and terracotta for accents, but mostly brick
Great episode! Loved the humour. To our First Nations People all objects animate, and inanimate are believed to have a soul. If brick wants to be an arch, let it be an arch!
For the Baker House dormitory at MIT Aalto sent out his staff in search of defect bricks, giving the surface of the facades their notable brutalist finish. Arches? Those bricks didn't even want to be bricks!
Huge fan of Louis and you, as an architecture student from Melbourne Australia I wish I had a teacher who could think as out of the box as you manage too. Great content very enjoyable and informative, thanks.
As an architect, I can tell you that bricks say, they really can take the pressure. But, tension can just kill them. Also, they prefer lime mortar, it is forgiving and to some extent self sealing. And, allows bricks to be reused. By the way, the vertical scratches in the brick produce with daylight a kind of Rembrandt group of browns. A bad artist mixes the color brown and it looks like chocolate pudding, a Rembrandt type artist puts on the paint in bits such that it looks like tree bark or brownstone, with bits of color here and there mixed by the eye, matching nature. Reds and yellows and browns even blues and greens working together a bit like army camouflage patterns. In California here, oddly enough we sometimes put brick on the front of houses to make them more decorative, and to protect the stucco and wood walls from splashing irrigation water from near the foundation plantings. In Chicago I almost got the impression that all the old common buildings were made wholly of brick on the outside, and sometimes they would decorate the front a little by putting up wood trim and maybe even a bit of wood siding. Sort of the reverse of California. And the square corner thingies are pronounced "coins" but spelled quoins in a bizarre French spelling.
Your best yet! Funny and full of insights on the contribution of bricks to the beauty of buildings. Would be great to team up with a specialist on the design contributions of various other workers involved in bringing buildings to life-brick layers, wood workers, roofers, even plumbers and electricians.. Surely there must be feedback loops which have advanced architecture. Would love to see videos exploring this architecture ecosystem.
First time viewer here. This video was NOT was i was expecting but I was entertained and learned things and now I forget what I was expecting anyway. Keep it up.
Architecture can/is humorous. Loved this video Stewart. Fun and really informative. Now I can point to different parts of a brick building, name them, and my wife will just look at me with a questioning look of "why did I marry this nerd.."
Cute. I loved the refresher for basic brick vocabulary, though I wonder how future architecture professors will look back on the words we utter while trying to explain the design process in only the way an architect or a politician can. 🤔 Will they literally translate us, or maybe assign figurative interpretations and include their own future vocabulary, or will they analyze us in a way that is completely foreign to us? Either way, thanks to this video, they’ll still know about bricks. 🙃
Coin = Corner ...Many years ago while working for the Forestry Service one summer, I helped clean out a small natural spring. I reached way down in the bottom and grabbed something that felt kind of interesting. It was a beautiful yellow brick with "Star" stamped on it.
If I ever saw two guys outside of my office stroke my office wall and talk about it in an obviously interested way, I would run out to ask them to tell me everything they know about that wall.
my compliments for such amazing content! For sure you‘ll get lots of views, great filmmaking, very self-conscious and just fun to watch as a whole, while staying really simple. Put a smile on my face!
I like how the guy has to keep remembering that bricks don't feel things. I felt like he was reminding himself as he said that. Imagine being that passionate about bricks, what a cool guy!
Been here since the leaks and every video is getting better and better. Have you considered making a video on the institut du monde arab? I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
The picture of the arch example at the beginning is the Civic Theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana! I love and miss that old building. Lots of fun times in there, in the seats and on the stage!
It's true- bricks ARE smart. I work in a brick manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania and the brick are smarter than some of my coworkers and have apparently outsmarted the high-end engineering that was used to design our production system😄
Love this so simple just on bricks, could you do this with other experts on design/ tech choices within maybe lintels, frames, arches, pavements/ curbs etc
hilarious....actually here, as brick production is very energy consuming, most old house demolished by council, bricks r cleaned 4 reuse. New homes built by these 2nd hand can be very special and nice. Not cheap at all by very esthetic in appearance..
Great video! You should visit Hamburg, Germany one day. We have a lot of beautiful brick buildings. Some are even UNESCO world heritage sights. For example look up Chilehaus, Speicherstadt and Sprinkenhof. And actually the movement to build brick office buildings in Hamburg that were built between 1886 and 1938 were inspired by Chicago!
I've talked to buildings and building materials myself from time to time (but they have yet to answer back). 😉 I love Chicago, it's such a great city for architecture.
Pretty partial to arches yeah
You heard it here folks!
yessir
Arch PogChamp
I throw bricks and shatter them.
Fear me.
Me as well
i like how well this straddles the line between being serious and satire
Metamodern
I need more of this in my life. Funny-ass shit that I walk away from with an ounce more culture
With a sprinkling of aspburgers
Informational Shitpost
This is someone's office.
bricks are so beautiful specifically because of all the suffering they have to endure for us. quite touching video
they are martyrs of our own desire
And they don’t burn catastrophically like composite cladding.
Sometimes, I hit them just to see something beautiful 💀
This guy klay they keep talking about has gone through so much 😔
Said the slavemaster
"No, that's a new brick that's meant to look like commons. No, that's trash" Hell yeah, we out here roasting bricks
But they already got roasted ;)
@@irimac1806 Now they're twice baked.
Oven blasted that bitch
I'm so high I'm brick, they said I wasn't alive but, I'm not that stone cold
In 200 years they’ll be historical and then who’s laughing? The bricks, probably
*pets building for an uncomfortably long time* "And this is someone's office." *slowly walks away*
So good.
@@stewarthicks Throughout my civil engineering undergrad course, I used to get stoned with my friends on college campus and we used to do these kind of silly stuff. You reminded me of my college days. Thanks :)
That’s what depressed people do, right?
ua-cam.com/video/SItFvB0Upb8/v-deo.html
@@rajadhirajmaharaj is that like… a past time for bricks?
@@baconwizard as a fellow civil engineering undergrad, yes, yes it is.
Last July, UNESCO declared a church by Architect Eladio Dieste, here in Uruguay, a world heritage site. Dieste has been called "master of brick"; his most emblematic works take this material to its maximum lightness in the creation of amazing structures. I like to think that he somehow knew how to make bricks be what they want and deserve to be.
This was a beautiful Google search, thank you for pointing us his way.
Indeed, my fellow Uruguayan!
Dieste is amazing. I dream of living in a brick house designed by him… what would it have been like?
Grande Alejo por la recomendación. Su iglesia es una gran inspiración a la creatividad
Good looking out @Alejandro Vero, thanks!
😂 I am a Tile-setter and have had this very talk with customers… Things do have a tendency to not doing certain things. Glass tile does not want to be glued to anything… they vibrate at such high frequency that it shakes itself loose. That’s why silicon is used successfully. 😂
We mechanics do talk to our material. Sometime they are the only thing to talk to. Construction can be lonely 😞
Maybe the materiel is speaking to you because you're there to listen?
Maybe you're the one bearing witness to variables that would take people lifetimes and many perspectives to understand or a book.
But
Either way.
You've seen into a corner that makes up an important part of reality.
Homes are on the decline or maybe it's better to say buildings. But people can build but regulations nowadays make diy illegal so the alternative is homeless, rent, or struggling until you succeeded in getting
A
Home not
The home.
@@dandywaysofliving Yes, Indeed. I was a little miffed at this video till the end when the farce was lifted. 😊
We do have the ability to hear, with uncanny depth, into the world of rock and sand. In fact if one were to make the material aware of your intentions, the pieces will let you know theirs by any means they may muster. I have had tiles leave my hand by crazy means. Some that will not come out of the box and others that plummet to the floor and smash… all without explanation. The whole world is alive with intention and I now see why the Wind was given Deification.
When it doesn't work, u assume some colorful language is involved
@@StephenRansom47 I skateboard and I use 2 stones I found near a couples grave by the side of the road.
I ride against traffic.
I don't trust 20+ cars passing behind me with my only defense being my eyes behind my head (I have none) and the thin white strip of paint on the road.
.
We'll it's been 4 years now and I have forgotten em in parking lots, houses and bus stops but somehow.
I always get em back.
The last time I lost em I bet em.
I didn't wanna lose em. But I forgot em by the bus stop.
I decided fuck it new rocks.
We'll I lost 1 of them new ones so I decided to see if the classics were still around.
Yup.
I have em and I'm happy.
But I see them as blessings.
I carry 2 stones I found near 2 graves on the side of the road.
Probably bicyclist.
But I read the names. The graves been removed but it was a couple.
They died because the road said ride with with traffic.
Basically saying.
Yea trust them cars and strangers not to kill you when you have 30+ people passing u by.
These stones have helped me and I love em.
I use em for more wind resistance to propel me forward or as brakes as I roll down hill.
When I'm bored they're maracas and sometimes I can communicate with the birds by clicking em.
It's funny when I went to get em back. The birds knew and guarded my stones for me. When I showed up it was like they knew I was there for that reason.
The universe is a funny place. Just being in this thread makes me wonder how much Power people have and how much the universe wants to see people smile.
Yea shit might seem iffy but considering a comment left today might not be seen until 3 months from now or 10years makes u think how even right now. We hold infinite power.
I know this is about tile and bricks but I stand by my reason. I considered 3d printing my stones in mass as a sellable item. But nah. I'll chill here and let the universe give everyone their own hope. Lol I'm just happy to experience others perspectives. Keep it going
😎🤟💫
@@dandywaysofliving That’s a fantastic story and example of just what I am talking about. Who, or what, is empowering these events is irrelevant. Noticing that power is the event. Your thoughts and those of the fallen cyclists as well as those who placed the rocks, or stood near them in mourning … those mental forces give rise to extraordinary powers.
I had done an illustration in the July before 9/11… the drawing had the Twin Towers in the background of a youth who’s tattoos show “The Class of 2001” being dragged underwater by an Anchor. It still haunts me. That same month three films also had interesting pre-cognition… The first Spider-Man movie, Final Fantasy - The Spirt Within and Metropolis.
The world is filled with mystery… believing that, makes it so. Keep Seeing that. 👍
The beauty of traditional brick construction it’s that it tells the story of how the building was built. It adds the human scale to the building. This is what is lacking on “modern” brick design, where it’s just a veneer and they are put in a bunch, so it ends up looking or “feeling” fake.
That is so underrated and true
I think that 'modern' brick buildings can be good, but I understand what you mean. It takes an understanding of traditional brick construction to do it well, you can't just slap it on as a veneer and expect it to be good. Unfortunately that is what a lot of people do.
But of course when describing how the bricks tell a story, we must remember that we don’t mean that literally. As, of course, these are bricks, and therefore not sentient. They can’t actually talk to you.
The idea of using brick for anything much over 5 storeys is strange to me (apart from old utilitarian / industrial / monolithic buildings like chimney towers). Bricks only make sense if they can be seen up close where the grain and craftsmanship of brick construction can be utilised and appreciated. Otherwise you might as well use glass and steel.
My wife, a Chicagoan, walked in right after I started this and said, “What in the world are you watching? 🤷🏻♀️” She thought that you were purposefully making jokes throughout the two minutes that she sat through. However, I came to your defense and she says that she now understands that you were being serious the entire time.
🤣
“I cannot stress this enough. This in not an arch”.😀 When I was a kid, growing up in the South, my father was a traveling salesman who sold roofing products to small lumber yards in South Carolina. This was in the late 1950s. I would occasionally go with him and, yes, it was more than a little like walking into a Walker Evans photograph, though at the time I had no idea who Walker Evans was. One of the places he went was a brickyard. It was small operation this several small kilns and pallets of unfired bricks. The guy that owned it showed me around and at the end he gave me a raw unfired brick. I had it for many years, but, let’s face it, unfired brick aren’t that permanent.
shouldve given you a wooden brick mold, those things are pretty popular recently for some reason
When you put an engineer and an architect in a room:
- "So do the bricks want to do that?"
"It's clay Matthew, they don't want anything"
- "I don't think they like that..."
"Well I wouldn't BUT I'M HUMAN!"
As with talking to the dead, talking to bricks is easy. It's getting them to talk back that is the hard part.
I heard if you build s brick wall though it's like talking to your husband.
well good thing they dont talk back, imagine if they talked...
I find that bricks tell me a lot.
@@lesvalernipi9871 I'll bet you are fun at parties.
All and all I'm just a nother brick in the wall
Love bricks. Brick breed creativity, and give buildings a warmth and human scale that few other materials can muster. I wish that modern architecture could find more creativity with brickwork than I've currently seen. Fun video!
I love my brick.
Agreed. It's a shame that it's not utilized in a more creative way in modern construction. I also find it disappointing that most brick today is only one layer thick, attached to a wooden structure underneath. It's used as nothing more than decoration, instead of being the walls that the interior is built to.
I'm lucky enough to livein a older house with brick walls that are a foot thick. That's how brick is supposed to be used; to build a structure, not just adorne it.
@@wirelesmike73 And those walls are... Resistant to a lot of things. I've seen brickwork bunkers. That shit literally needs to be detonated from the inside to be destroyed effectively. The outside is literally bomb proof
@@wirelesmike73 I agree
They really just tricked me into learning about bricks for 10 minutes with comedy... well played gentlemen.. well played.
Gotcha
Finally,Finally someone who understands bricks and their silent conversations. I was born and raised for five years in aFLL Wright modified prarie style house ... The bricks I was told were called Roman style long and narrow.And that house had a dignified, no nonsense attitude about it, after it was finished about several hundred bricks were stacked in the rear yard, and my cousins and neighbor kids would use them to try and build walls We were never successful because we did not know the idea of a keystone at the top center and the use of mortar to bind the bricks and hold them level, We could get to four feet or so and collapse would happen. One day an older gent stopped to visit my grand pop saw what we were trying to do and explained we needed a keystone. With some cardboard boxes he showed how to make an arch form to hold bricks and when the key brick was installed the arch held
All I remember from my masonry studio is the most common thing bricks say is "haha you thought"
Great job. Bricks just being bricks. Doin’ us a solid every day.
Thanks bricks
@@stewarthicks the bricks can not hear your appreciation because they are made of clay and are not in fact, alive.
@@michaeladams3762 i can dream
Loved this, not only for the information but for the humor!
I grew up in a brick house in NYC. It was built as a church in 1831, but converted into a house just a few years later in 1842. The walls were laid up in English bond -- one row of headers alternating with one row of stretchers throughout. It was Greek Revival, so it didn't have arches of any sort -- just brownstone lintels over the windows and doors. It was a very austere but beautifully-proportioned building.
And I imagine it had a strong personality. Our house is almost 100, and has a strong personality. So, in a way, the bricks are talking!
Beware the brick house with too much of a strong personality. We lived in a house that took it to the level of stubbornness, if not arrogance. Also, it would not listen to anyone, and positively bristled at constructive criticism. I felt it could be manipulative, especially on the weekends when friends came over. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of issues to work out over that house and it’s haughty bricks.
@@albertbatfinder5240 LOL! This may be so. But at least the Big Bad Wolf will never be able to blow your house down.
Stewart's delivery and dead-pan tone makes him not only a comedic genius, but his attention to detail and love of architecture and architects makes people WANT to watch his videos!! If you haven't seen his "Leaks" video, you can absolutely see why I HAD to sub his channel!! I seriously wish he were one of my profs!!!
I like the dry sense of humor. I would love to see a tour of Chicago with you narrating interesting buildings.
constantly insisting that an inanimate object has feelings while in the presence of a professional is by far one of the best things i've seen this year.
Really? You haven’t watched any politicians talking to professionals yet?
There was a time in my town when the local government offered free red bricks too anyone opening a church. So you can find old buildings on different church areas that you can tell are the old church house because of the red bricks. There’s both a Catholic Church and a Buddhist temple close to each other that have old buildings made from those red bricks.
Where ?
@@marwaelkhouly8951 .
I don’t know why but this is so freaking cool to me.
Strange that there were just bricks laying around. Perhaps there was an earthquake or fire that left brick buildings in ruins?
@@Katya_Lastochka Could also do something with subsidisation. Perhaps there were a lot brick business and maybe demand had declined.
my favorite piece of information is at 7:23 "I cannot stress this enough: This is not an arch"
5:46 re Coins. The French word for 'corner' is 'coin' (IPA kwɛ̃) from the Latin 'cuneus'. A corner is masculine in French. (Probably more information than anyone needs or wants). Great video as always. Thanks.
@Fremen yes, it does. Well spotted. In fact the French for 'wedge' is also 'coin'.
I was wondering how he spelled it, coign or quoin, and never even considered coin! Quoin is a good one to remember for scrabble when your letter tray is unhealthy.
@@marcdefaoite And when you think about it, a corner is just a 90* wedge!! Not useful for shimming or prying stuff apart, but a wedge nonetheless!!
It's spelled quoin.
@@TheRealAristocrates thanks. I learn a new English word today
Right about 2:00, when he said the newer construction brick was trash. That's when I subscribbed! Great video thanks.
When I saw the title I got excited that you might talk about how brick details explain things about buildings, like Time Team's Jonathan Foyle who can date a building by its brickwork. Instead I got a light-hearted tour of Chicago which was most enjoyable. I went to the College of William and Mary, which is composed universally of brick buildings. A large percentage of them, even the brand-new ones, are laid in Flemish bond with black-glazed headers, which creates a nice basketwork effect and ties in with the historic tourist district. In watching Time Team I learned that the recipe for the glaze for black headers has been lost, so maybe the bricks are laughing gently and talking in that way!
0:35 Denial
0:52 Was alive
2:53 Face
3:09 Arches alive?
3:33 Bargaining
4:29 Depression
5:31 The face in stones
5:56 Someone save them
7:23 Stressed
8:36 *No.*
9:18 Plot twist
9:58 He run
Haha thanks for this!
Props to Will for playing along!
I loved the quirky dynamics brought by the idea of "talking with bricks", but especially I loved the grand reveal at the end:)
"Argh, these architects don't wanna listen to me. It's like I'm talking to a brick wall."
First off, I love your channel. One video was recommended to me and I ended up watching every second of your channel in the past week.
Second, it always strikes me about bricks how cost (perhaps also weight and relative manufacture difficulty), in comparison to other materials, is their only negative feature. They create more jobs, they last longer, are gorgeous, and generally are nicer to throw through windows than chunks of vinyl siding.
Awesome! Thank you!
What Belton said. Also; bricks are gorgeous, especially reclaimed bricks (there I said it). Also as well; Will Quam is hilarious and should have his own brick channel. I would love to take some of your classes Stewart, actually I would really enjoy a history-of bricks lecture from Will Quam if such a thing existed.
In some parts of the world bricks were actually an affordable building material, more so than wood... Denmark has a lot of clay, but not much in terms of great forests, so brick buildings were really the go-to option until the advent of affordable concrete for single-family homes.
(And many Danes who don't understand the history of US home building find it odd that so many houses are made from wood; here that's mainly for temporary buildings or perhaps for a simple weekend home. Which is a bit stupid, because wood is obviously a great material, as are bricks.)
@@CopenhagenDreaming That’s really fascinating! I never knew that.
It makes sense, though. Use what you have. Neat!
@@BobbyJHeupel Imported stuff is always going to cost more - And you literally just have to go across the border from Denmark to Sweden to see loads and loads of wooden buildings, simply because they have the large forests to supply the raw material.
There's a reason buildings look different in different countries, and it's often quite prosaic. We couldn't build in marble or dressed stone in Denmark, because all we have is soil, clay and field stones. (And bits of wood, so we could do timber-framed buildings with panels of wattle and daub, and later bricks.) Vernacular building styles are fascinating because they tell us a story about what was available in an area a few hundred years ago. Ditto for cooking and really most parts of culture and tradition in various countries.
Hi, I'm a climber and especially in the recent pandemic I noticed that you guys are building buildings and bridges with all the wrong climbing difficulties. Most are build in a way that makes it way too hard to climb them and then there are some that are way to easy to climb. I would like to request that you, as a profession I mean, take better care of the climbing grades of your buildings and especially bridges (because climbing on bridges is not that problematic in a legal sense). I would really like to see some that are difficult but not too difficult. Maybe even have different routes for more or less advanced climbers. Maybe you could talk with the route setters in your local climbing gym about that? It would really improve the world.
Thank you very much!
Try hooks on the underside of horizontal precast, a good workout.
Also, check out Fred Dibnah and his use of advanced pro for brickwork: ua-cam.com/video/F04dGK1_wYA/v-deo.html
NB: Alex has nothing on Fred!
@@CCRoselle I've seen Fred before. I'm scared to look when he's doing his acrobatics without a rope. 🙈
Point noted sir, will use that in my architectural practice
@@ziasmailbox Thank you, very kind of you! 👍
Where do you practice?
@@HermitianAdjoint Patna , India . I have a small boutique firm.
Hilarious. Also, it’s great to see someone younger who has a deep knowledge and passion about an old craft. That’s Will for sharing! Keep craft alive.
Y'all have some lazy bricks up there in Chicago just sitting around. I put my bricks to work. Just yesterday I used 2 bricks to jack up my generator to drain the gas out , after I finally got my power back from hurricane Ida. I also have a couple of bricks holding a car up in my front yard. Yup, here in Louisiana we work lazy bricks.
Nah man, not all Chicagoian bricks are lazy. Used my bricks to jack up my car the other day because it's too low to fit my normal jack underneath without driving onto a hardened object like a brick
@@wildcodefox7313 my bad. I'm sure there are some good bricks everywhere.
Thank You to all the events that lead to Stewart Hicks picking up this sense of humour and to become an architect and making this UA-cam Channel and gracing us mortals with these visual and audible journeys from looking at lost Architecture to talking to freaking bricks. I am sick of panel discussions and presentations that are available in abundance on UA-cam by Universities and Architects. Finally a dude goofing around with Architecture. Thank You again for this. Please O please more of this.
Wow, thank you for the endorsement! Glad you like what we're doing here...
I’ve been on one of Will’s brick walking tours. I gained a huge respect for bricks from him. Great collab!!
Thank you Stewart. Who knew that a story about bricks would make me homesick for Chicago. Next time you see brick, say hello for me.
That Will guy is a pretty awesome dude. I’ve met him before. He really knows his bricks.
I expected a video about the structural integrity of bricks. Instead I got this. I'm quite satisfied.
I’m 53 and always lived in an timber clad home until recently , I’ve always bought an fixer upper and what I’ve discovered is that your flexibility to change things are diminished without lots of work so l guess if done right the first time brick is timeless .
I’m also in the decision part of choosing a brick for an extension and it is daunting the choice of brick on the market.
It’s so cute the way you are talking about wishes and feelings of the bricks and equally cute the way that he responds to this misunderstanding of yours 🥰
This was different in the best most amazing way possible. Thanks for sharing this was so much fun!
nothing better than someone who has been immersed in his craft so deeply for so long that it has developed a seed of madness within him. only the best of craftspeople can hope to hear the whispers.
Thank you. Your bricks have cast laughter on my day.
Cheers from a brick in the NZ Brick Database. : )
Thanks!
Omg, thank you!!
6:17 It really hurts me to see these bricks literally hanging in the air above the window openings. That's certainly not what they want.
You can see cracking :(
Keep up the good work, and your students are fortunate to have a professor explaining concepts in a compelling format. Writer, director, producer, explorer, historian, and architect, you are a talent!
Mr.Quam's continuous determination to let you understand bricks aren't human makes this video.
This was amazing! I had no idea how much I needed Will Quam and bricks in my life.
I feel like he’d love to come to London - so many interesting brick arches going on.... especially when a railway arch makes a turn - the underside looks like a ‘brick wave’
As I walk in my neighborhood in Chicago I'm continually amazed with the decorative work done just with brick, well, a few stones and terracotta for accents, but mostly brick
thank you for bringing us more awareness of brick. i will be sure to be aware of my locals bricks, and ask them questions from now on
I like how I can, from the comfort of my Amsterdam house, just look out the window to countless brick arches and no concrete slabs
Great episode! Loved the humour. To our First Nations People all objects animate, and inanimate are believed to have a soul. If brick wants to be an arch, let it be an arch!
Yassss, srsly. ...And what's with all the squares, eh?
Never heard of a talking circle before? lol.
A master class! Anyone watching this video will never look at a brick the same way.
For the Baker House dormitory at MIT Aalto sent out his staff in search of defect bricks, giving the surface of the facades their notable brutalist finish. Arches? Those bricks didn't even want to be bricks!
Haha!
"They're no more cousins than... uh... I am a cousin of the brick". Golden!
Huge fan of Louis and you, as an architecture student from Melbourne Australia I wish I had a teacher who could think as out of the box as you manage too. Great content very enjoyable and informative, thanks.
As an architect, I can tell you that bricks say, they really can take the pressure. But, tension can just kill them. Also, they prefer lime mortar, it is forgiving and to some extent self sealing. And, allows bricks to be reused.
By the way, the vertical scratches in the brick produce with daylight a kind of Rembrandt group of browns. A bad artist mixes the color brown and it looks like chocolate pudding, a Rembrandt type artist puts on the paint in bits such that it looks like tree bark or brownstone, with bits of color here and there mixed by the eye, matching nature. Reds and yellows and browns even blues and greens working together a bit like army camouflage patterns.
In California here, oddly enough we sometimes put brick on the front of houses to make them more decorative, and to protect the stucco and wood walls from splashing irrigation water from near the foundation plantings. In Chicago I almost got the impression that all the old common buildings were made wholly of brick on the outside, and sometimes they would decorate the front a little by putting up wood trim and maybe even a bit of wood siding. Sort of the reverse of California.
And the square corner thingies are pronounced "coins" but spelled quoins in a bizarre French spelling.
There are videos of brick domes being built. Truly amazing stuff.
No idea why the algorithms recommended this, but it was entertaining and informative
Your best yet! Funny and full of insights on the contribution of bricks to the beauty of buildings. Would be great to team up with a specialist on the design contributions of various other workers involved in bringing buildings to life-brick layers, wood workers, roofers, even plumbers and electricians.. Surely there must be feedback loops which have advanced architecture. Would love to see videos exploring this architecture ecosystem.
i dont know who you are, what this channel is about, of why it got recommended to me but I'm glad it did. definitely subscribing to this!
Happy to have you aboard!
Thank you for this video Stewart. I really enjoyed it :) Always nice to learn something new!
I spent pretty much this entire video so far smiling. Bravo 👏
Informative, strangely emotional romp through brick’s hidden relationships.
First time viewer here. This video was NOT was i was expecting but I was entertained and learned things and now I forget what I was expecting anyway. Keep it up.
Architecture can/is humorous. Loved this video Stewart. Fun and really informative. Now I can point to different parts of a brick building, name them, and my wife will just look at me with a questioning look of "why did I marry this nerd.."
i genuinely could NOT tell if the attitudes were satire or not, up until the very end.
brilliant 👏 👏 👏
Next you should interview more terracotta! Loved this one.
great suggestion! thanks!
Great mix of helpful facts about these beautiful creatures, and hilarious dry humor. Awesome video
Cute. I loved the refresher for basic brick vocabulary, though I wonder how future architecture professors will look back on the words we utter while trying to explain the design process in only the way an architect or a politician can. 🤔 Will they literally translate us, or maybe assign figurative interpretations and include their own future vocabulary, or will they analyze us in a way that is completely foreign to us? Either way, thanks to this video, they’ll still know about bricks. 🙃
Coin = Corner ...Many years ago while working for the Forestry Service one summer, I helped clean out a small natural spring. I reached way down in the bottom and grabbed something that felt kind of interesting. It was a beautiful yellow brick with "Star" stamped on it.
The aesthetic of an alien being taught about brick architecture here is everything
Found to ur channel from the leak videos subscribed right away after the video, really like the subtle humor among all the information...
so great to see the man behind that great account
If I ever saw two guys outside of my office stroke my office wall and talk about it in an obviously interested way, I would run out to ask them to tell me everything they know about that wall.
my compliments for such amazing content! For sure you‘ll get lots of views, great filmmaking, very self-conscious and just fun to watch as a whole, while staying really simple. Put a smile on my face!
Thank you!!
I like how the guy has to keep remembering that bricks don't feel things. I felt like he was reminding himself as he said that. Imagine being that passionate about bricks, what a cool guy!
OMG, I enjoy this channel, but did not expect to laugh so much. Thank you both!
Been here since the leaks and every video is getting better and better. Have you considered making a video on the institut du monde arab? I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Thank you and good suggestion!
Love this one. It’s hilarious yet educational.
Brick of Chicago is one of my favorite instagram pages. love the humor! great video
Mine too
The comedic tone for this video, it's just genius
The picture of the arch example at the beginning is the Civic Theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana! I love and miss that old building. Lots of fun times in there, in the seats and on the stage!
It's true- bricks ARE smart.
I work in a brick manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania and the brick are smarter than some of my coworkers and have apparently outsmarted the high-end engineering that was used to design our production system😄
Thanks for having me, Stewart!
Any time! I hope you'll agree to do a follow up. Thank you for being so great and gracious!
Love this so simple just on bricks, could you do this with other experts on design/ tech choices within maybe lintels, frames, arches, pavements/ curbs etc
This is the kind of informational video I love.
6:21 Shows a crack that would have been avoided if the design had incorporated arches instead of thin steel lentils.
This video is perfect to try not laughing to had a blast with some of my buddies watching random videos.
hilarious....actually here, as brick production is very energy consuming, most old house demolished by council, bricks r cleaned 4 reuse. New homes built by these 2nd hand can be very special and nice. Not cheap at all by very esthetic in appearance..
I absolutely love this channel and this video in particular is so wonderfully dry. The tiny field mic...
hahaha that the last segment was hilarious!!!
Will is great!
@@stewarthicks : really should not be sharing discrete alley conversations a guy was having...
@@garywheeler7039 I might confront him about it in a later episode.
Gotta love the dedication to the bit
You guys are so silly. And so much fun. I am convinced that every brick has a soul, so imagine them collectively! Arch-angels, they are, in fact.
First I've seen of your channel but, man!, I loved this piece.
Great video! You should visit Hamburg, Germany one day. We have a lot of beautiful brick buildings. Some are even UNESCO world heritage sights. For example look up Chilehaus, Speicherstadt and Sprinkenhof. And actually the movement to build brick office buildings in Hamburg that were built between 1886 and 1938 were inspired by Chicago!
I'd love to!
He's so adamant that bricks aren't alive that I'm starting to get suspicious
I knew it
The bricks may not talk much but I'm pretty sure masons talk to the bricks.
Even without talking, the bricks can tell us a great deal.
I've talked to buildings and building materials myself from time to time (but they have yet to answer back). 😉 I love Chicago, it's such a great city for architecture.