Tag Archives: bricks

Bricks and design at an art school in Bangalore (Bengaluru)

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THE HUMBLE BRICK is a much used material in the construction of many kinds of building. It can be used unimaginatively, as it often is, or imaginatively to create visually intriguing textures.

 

During a visit to one of Bangalore’s art schools,  the Chitrakala Parishath,  we watched architecture students participating in an outdoor “brick techtonics” workshop. This was being supervised by the noted Indonesian architect Andy Rahman.

 

We watched small groups of students arranging bricks so as to make interesting patterns, following plans drawn up by Andy Rahman. As they worked, Mr Rahman moved from group to group, discussing with them what they were doing.

 

All around the area where the workshop was taking place, labourers were working noisily on a construction site where new buildings were being built for the art school. Thus, the architects working on realising theoretical bricklaying design ideas were surrounded by real life applications of established building practices.

 

I hope that when the budding architecture students begin designing ‘for real’ that they will recall the interesting brickwork creativity that Mr Rahman was introducing to them. For he was showing them that even the humble brick can become a component in a visually fascinating design.

Baked earth and building Islamic places of worship

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THE COUNTRYSIDE AROUND Murshidabad is dotted with brick factories. Their tall, often smoking, chimneys are surrounded by vast expanses of new bricks, usually stacked neatly. The clay that can be found in the area is particularly good for brick making.  So, it is unsurprising that many local buildings make substantial use of brickwork.

 

One of the towers of the Katra mosque

Near Murshidabad,  there are two famous mosques constructed not with stone or concrete, but with bricks. One of these, the Katra mosque, was constructed entirely with bricks between 1723 and 1724. This huge edifice was built not only as a mosque but also as a caravanserai. It is one of the largest caravanserais in the Indian Subcontinent.  The rooms of the caravanserai are arranged in a square that surrounds the mosque rather like cloisters in a monastery. These small rooms also served as workplaces and bedrooms for students studying the Koran and other Islamic texts. Thus, the Katra was a complex consisting of a mosque, a caravanserai, and a madrasa. At each of its four corners,  there were tall brick towers. Only two of these remain.   The tomb of Nawab Murshid Quli Khan(1660-1727) is located under the staircase leading to the main entrance of the building. Protected by the Archaeological Survey of India, the remains of the Katra complex are well conserved. This is not the case for another brick mosque nearby: the Fauti Masjid.

 

The Fauti was constructed in 1740 by Nawab Safaraz Khan (c1700 – 1740). However,  it was never completed. It is a large mosque, 137 feet long and 38 feet wide. If you manage to chamber within it, which I did with great difficulty despite helping hands, the remains of its five huge incomplete domes can be seen.

 

The Fauti is a protected building, but in a bad condition. It is possibly perilously unstable. However, because of the vegetation around it and within it, it is a picturesque ruin of the sort that eighteenth and nineteenth century European Romantic artists enjoyed portraying.

 

In addition to these mosques, which were built using baked clay (I.e., bricks), we have also seen some Hindu temples near Murshidabad that include terracotta in their construction.  But more about these at a later date.

Holes in a brick wall

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WALKING PAST UNIVERSITY College School (‘UCS’) in Hampstead’s Frognal, I spotted something that reminded me of my schooldays, both at the Hall School (in Swiss Cottage) and Highgate School (…in Highgate!).

A part of the brick wall enclosing the grounds of UCS is inscribed with initials. Some of the bricks also have circular depressions. Those which have not been filled in have interiors which are parts of spheres. The bricks on the walls of the schools I attended used to be spotted liberally with similar circular, spherical concavities.

The concavities, which are never more than about 1.5 inches in diameter, were created using the edges of coins. If the edge of a coin is placed firmly against a brick and the twisted left and right repeatedly, the sharp coin gradually wears away the brick and creates a concavity as described.

In the days long before mobile telephones were even the stuff of dreams, mining out brickwork and inscribing one’s initials provided a perfect way for school kids to pass a few idle moments and to leave one’s mark.

Read more about Frognal and the rest of Hampstead in my new book available from https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R2WRK92

Roman recycling

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TOLLESBURY IN ESSEX on the Blackwater River estuary is a village just over 5 miles southeast of Tiptree, a small town close to the Wilkinson jam factory and museum. This charming village, where a good friend of ours lives, has a venerable parish church, St Mary the Virgin.

Roman bricks used to construct the arch above the south entrance of St Mary’s in Tollesbury, Essex.

In common with most of the parish churches we have visited during our extensive roamings around the English countryside, this church, whose construction had begun by the 11th century, contains a rich selection of interesting features. These are well described in a copiously illustrated booklet about the edifice published by the Friends of St Mary’s Tollesbury in early 2020. Amongst the interesting things we saw within St Mary’s, one of them particularly intrigued me: the incorporation of Roman bricks in the fabric of the church.

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a Romano-British cemetery near the village. They have concluded from their findings that in about 200 AD, there was a significant rural settlement located near Tollesbury at that time. Other remains are evidence that the district around the estuarine village has been the site of human activity since the Neolithic era (4000-2000 BC).

As if to prove that recycling is not simply a recent trend, the church of St Mary incorporates bricks made whilst the Romans occupied England. These can be seen clearly above the south doorway within the church. The 11th century arch above this portal is made entirely of recycled Roman bricks. Some more brickwork made with Roman bricks can be seen exposed above the gothic archway in the western wall of the nave, which is also part of the late 11th century bell tower.

Although the re-used Roman bricks have been ‘highlighted’ in St Mary’s, the structure of the parish church in the nearby village of Goldhanger also contains recycled Roman bricks. Making bricks at the time when these churches were built would have been far more laborious than making bricks using today’s industrial techniques. So, re-using bricks that had already been made would have been very sensible.