Bricking it: Randers Tegl

When thinking of strikingly unique and personal architect-built homes, it’s easy to get seduced by modern materials. Angular constructions of weathered steel, glass full-frontals and earth-blending facades of foliage have kerb-appeal, but with its long-term stability and sustainable properties, the third little pig was right to choose brick.

With over 100 years of experience in crafting bricks from the finest clay Scandinavia has to unearth, the Danish company Randers Tegl know what can be done with clay, and what can’t. And there’s not a lot that can’t. With a textural patina unique to each brick thanks to a perfected waterstruck technique, Randers Tegl’s Ultima series helps the most ambitious architects stand out.

As one of Randers Tegl’s best-selling bricks for ground-breaking projects, RT 154 Ultima is a stand out member of the family. The brick’s light tone provides a perfect canvas for many architectural features to shine, while its coarse texture and a slightly pink hue brings a profound depth and flavour to many projects.

You don’t need to look far down RT 154 Ultima’s long list of accomplishments to understand what the brick can do. With steps that rise to a doorway as if from amongst the lapping waves themselves, the bricks are graphically choreographed to envelope the entranceway of this seaside villa in Aahrus, Denmark. With its waterstruck texture, the house seems beautifully beaten by the sea air, like a characteristic wall on a coastal road. The sun-bleached colour of the brick brings a stark contrast to the vibrant blues of the Danish sky and sea, and its lush green lands.

Creating a masterpiece such as this, as any great painter will confirm, is all in the brushwork. At twice the length of a normal brick, the fine brushes of the Ultima range is Randers Tegl’s secret weapon in a literal pallet and metaphorical palette of bricks, for painting great masterpieces of architecture.

The long, thin brick allows for interesting and intellectual effects to add character or purpose to a building’s exterior. For example, German architectural practice A53 utilised the shape of RT 154 Ultima to create an impenetrable pattern that wraps itself around the corners of these two private residences in Berlin. While keeping the houses’ interiors mysteriously hidden, the same effect creates an architectural shadow game on their balconies, moving with the constant regularity of time.

Meanwhile, just what can be achieved with different sized and shaped bricks is evidenced in this Cobe Architects project in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Five townhouses are glued together by a familial synergy of masonry. Using a combination of RT 154 Ultima and RT 554 Eos bricks, regimented windows are set out like framed artworks in the facade. Each apartment is allowed its own independence of form, however, with the exposed ends presenting features of laddered brickwork and ghosting window frames. With the next two residences sharing a speckled skin, the building’s narrative culminates in a central suite. By reorienting the RT 154 Ultima bricks, Cobe used their waterstruck texture to seemingly reflect the beauty of a rainfall, running in rivulets down a muscular back.

In not quite so dramatic, but no less captivating form, this home in Warwickshire, UK allows the RT 154 Ultima to weave its way around the landscape. After navigating the eye across an extended canopy, the long bricks continue on its underside, guiding visitors through the entranceway. Then, before you know it, they’re in the kitchen, nonchalantly perusing the glassware.

Bringing brickwork inside can be a useful technique to create a narrative between interior and exterior environments, and to streamline the flow through a home’s floor plan. Due to an intense climate during the summer months, Australians spend much of the day indoors. But at this home on Australia’s Gold Coast, Joe Adsett Architects has used RT 154 Ultima’s textured patterns with a deep-set mortar to link the two. Now the home’s residents can enjoy the paradisiacal atmosphere of the country’s East coast, at any time of year.

It’s time to take a step back. Sometimes it’s only by looking to the past that we are able to move forward. And despite brick being used as a building material for over 9000 years, it has seen relatively little change. Until now.

© Architonic