Top Five beautiful modern brick buildings

Brick as building material has pass the test of time. It has timeless quality along with many other benefits such as hard wearing and low maintenance, it also possesses good acoustic and thermal mass, as well as has good fire resistance quality. Architects in Australia and around the world has pushes the design capabilities of brick as building materials and come up with some of the most innovative use of bricks. Think Brick awards has also played a really important roles since 2012 in recognizing and rewarding modern Australian brick buildings that creatively showcases bricks in a whole new possibilities.

These are our top 5 picks of recent prize winners and/or finalists of Think Brick Awards (click in to find out more about each project)

1. Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, UTS by Frank Gehry
This brick building certainly explores the shape and form in a really new and unique way. It showcases bricks in never before seen way, that it can be used in a very fluid way instead of a rigid form that it is associated with in the past.The undulating design surfaces were achieved by the use of handmade physical design models followed by significant BIM modelling and prototyping.

2. Camino House by Bosske
This small extension to a Federation house is unique in its form, mimicking chimney shape and use of natural bricks to achieve both façade and roof to create a unifying sense to the form

3. Act for Kids Child and Family Centre of Excellence, Townsville (Qld) by m3architecture
Use of variety of brick patterns and laying technique to achieved architectural statement is what makes this building special. A bullnosed block was used as the standard unit and laid to achieve two patterns – a double stretcher stack bond, and a double stretcher-stretcher bond.

4. Penleigh and Essendon Grammar Middle Girls School by McBride Charles Ryan
Beautiful colour combined with fluid form lends to a unique architecture exploration for this education building. It identifies and reflects the school’s metaphore which always focus on possibility of intellectual exploration and the human imagination

5. Aperture House by Cox Rayner + Twofold Studio
The use of bricks in this project is most profound in the forming of niches, plinths and floor surfaces that create the effect of the garden terraces folding up into the house. Operable louvres and sliding doors blurring the division of indoor/outdoor spaces where the same material (bricks) is used throughout.

Enjoy this video from Think Brick Award 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvgn6JbJBZc

Do you know about the 10/50 Vegetation Clearing Scheme and how it impacts properties in bush fire zone?

If you live in a bush fire zone property, you are covered by the 10/50 scheme. This scheme basically makes it simple for those higher risk properties wanting to reduce their risk in the event of bush fire.

The scheme allows people in a designated area to:

• Clear trees on their property within 10 metres of a home, without seeking approval; and
• Clear underlying vegetation such as shrubs (but not trees) on their property within 50 metres of a home, without seeking approval.

Click this link to access the online tool to easily check if you land is covered by the 10/50 scheme. Be sure to check this regularly and on the day you are clearing to confirm eligibility as entitlement areas might change.

Interactive Buildings – Free tool to assess approval requirements

Have you ever wondered what you can or cannot do to your property without approval from your local council? The works that can be done without approval are often called exempted development. Now there is a new and free tool developed by NSW government to simplify the process called the Interactive Buildings tool. Read more…

Is it better or worse for developer with the new Apartment Design Guide?

The new Apartment Design Guide (ADG) and the revised SEPP 65 were officially launched on 17 July, 2015. Review of these planning guides is long overdue since the release of the original SEPP 65 and Residential Flat Design Code (RFDC) 13 years ago in 2002. The new guide is aimed to provide more clarity to both council and architects as well as developers with updated design quality principles to respond to contemporary issues . It also strengthen the requirements around design review panels to ensure quality development is proposed and built.

One of the key measures with this new guide is to add car parking to the non discretionary development standards. This means that there are now 3 matters covered by clause 30A of SEPP 65, where council has no ground to refuse an application if it meets the minimum requirements of CEILING HEIGHT, APARTMENT SIZE and CARPARKING. Read more…

Wood Wool Acoustic Panel

“CURSED BY SOUND. LIKED BY ARCHITECTS, LOVED BY NATURE.”

Finally, a building material that is created to fit aesthetic and functionality expectation and comes in line with sustainability. The wood wool acoustic panel is a new building material designed by Swedish design group Form Us With Love (http://www.baux.se/). The material is known as “material that breathes”, it is made from wood wool, cement and water, the combination of natural elements provide many functional characteristics such as sound absorbent, high moisture diffusion, low energy cost, less environmental impact along with its aesthetic appearance, making it the perfect sound insulation solution for residential, commercial or even public places.

The panel comes in 6 different shapes and a range of astonishing colors to choose from to create your own feature wall, your imagination is the only limit.