Marble, limestone, glass, and steel—they get all the oohs and aahs when it comes to architectural porn. To correct that long-running oversight, Phaidon has published Brick by William Hall and Dan Cruickshank. As the authors note, "Brick is modest, unpretentious and inclusive. A brick is after all just earth—the humblest thing imaginable." The book is a wonderful collection of some of the world's most stunning, creative, and memorable brick structures.
The image to the left is Peder Vilhem Jensen-Klint's Grundtvig's Church in Copenhagen. Begun in 1927, his "Expressionist church brorrows heavily from traditional Danish ecclesiastical architecture, an example of which is its crow stepped gable."
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Sir Edwin Lutyens is probably best known for the Presidential Residence in Delhi or the various English country estates he designed. The trippy image to the left, however, is of the social housing project Grosvenor Estate which was built in the 1930s in London.
Any architectural style that includes the word flamboyant in its title is bound to be interesting. The facade of St. Anne's in Vilnius features twisted and tangled brickwork (there are 33 types of shapes of brick in it) and is considered one of the more famous examples of Flamboyant Gothic. The magnificent church was designed by either Michael Enkinger or Benedikt Rejt in 1500.
It's been a while since Christianity was synonymous with creative architecture, but this Ecumenical Forum in Hamburg says otherwise. Built in 2012 by Wandel Hoefer Lorch + Hirsch, it is a residential and office building for an association of 19 Christian denominations. The bending recess in the facade "[highlights] a staple of Christian ecclesiastical architecture, namely a bell and a cross."
"No other man-made building material has been around as long as brick," the authors write. The image to the left is of the Malwiya Minaret which belonged to the Great Mosque of Samarra in modern-day Iraq. The Great Mosque was once the biggest in the world, but was almost completely destroyed in 1278. The spiraling tower is 52 meters above the ground.
This wave-like building designed by Königs Arkitekten is actually the church of St. Marien in Schillig, Germany on the North Sea coast.
There is something very "German" about this hulking office building designed by Fritz Höger in 1924 in Hamburg, Germany. Named "Chilehaus" it was built by a mining industrialist who made his money in Chile. The building is perhaps most recognizable today for its resemblance to a ship.
While "only" 2,200 Buddhist stupias, temples, and monasteries built on the platteau in Bagan survive, estimates hold that more than 10,000 were built between the 11th and 13th centuries.
While it is now dwarfed by newer members of New York City's skyline, the American Radiator Building is still one of the city's more iconic buildings. Topped off with a Neo-Gothic crown of black and gold, the building was commissioned in 1924 by the architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells.
Brick by William Hall and Dan Cruickshank. Published by Phaidon.
