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Because they’re pleasant to look at. Half the time, the wall isn’t even “needed”, other than for aesthetic purposes. Whenever a wall is purely functional, it’s

Because they’re pleasant to look at. Half the time, the wall isn’t even “needed”, other than for aesthetic purposes. Whenever a wall is purely functional, it’s almost never made of small clay bricks today. I’m talking about foundation walls, subsurface retaining walls, and similar things. The types of walls that aren’t meant to be looked at, but instead meant to hold something back or up. Whenever you see a wall being made of red clay bricks, that’s because the builder wants it to look nice. I suppose you can cast a concrete wall and apply a façade of bricks. But there’s still a skill required for that final step. Of course, you may have a different design aesthetic, wherein exposed concrete or large modular sections are both functional and pretty. But brick laying is all about looks. CMUs are a different story, and kind of prove your point. They’re much larger and so reduce the piecework involved, but still small enough to allow for onsite flexibility in construction.

dmix 5y ago
So bricklaying it’s basically an ‘artisanal’ type of product not a mass production type of thing that is ill suited for automation anyway. The article links to the MULE product (which was an evolution or pivot of their 15yr attempt at making a traditional bricklaying robot) makes more sense as it takes advantage of the lifting power of machines and uses much larger/longer bricks that would otherwise be too heavy to pick up by humans while accelerating the process. https://www.construction-robotics.com/ https://www.construction-robotics.com/ This is much like why pigeonholing AI into traditional cars is more difficult than say having a fleet of cars region wide which all talk to each other and coordinate movements with roads and crosswalks that are also designed for automated cars.
mr_toad 5y ago
> But brick laying is all about looks. I’ve seen stores with moulded facades designed to look like bricks that are attached to reinforced concrete.
- endymi0n 5y ago
  From what I'm understanding the hard part of doing that stuff concrete is curation time. There's a lot of projects trying the "easy" route and effectively do additive 3D printing with concrete instead of glue. Conversely, they have the same problems... they look pretty ugly: https://www.realestate.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/15111803/China-3D-printed-house4-2000x15000.jpg https://www.realestate.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/0... Doing it "properly" means building proper moulding, rebar, vibration casting all the stuff that sounds like almost impossible to automate with 2021 technology. Bricks have the advantage that they're pre-cured, so you don't have to wait ages until the wall actually supports something — and if that something is just the next layer.
  - candiodari 5y ago
    So what people do is you build the "ugly" way (usually large panels, maybe even prefab, I doubt 3d printing is working that well right now), then cut bricks into 5 slices and stick those slices on top with glue. You can't tell it's not a brick wall except when you're standing right against it. And of course, you only do this on visible walls. It can even be done on top of wood. https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/skills-and-know-how/carpentry-and-woodworking/how-to-install-brick-veneer-on-a-wall https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/skills-and-know-how/carpen...
  - cudgy 5y ago
    Paint or stucco would be a big improvement to the aesthetics of the primary exterior surfaces that house … and changing the hideous orange puke trim color.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> Because they’re pleasant to look at. I expect that this is less a case of "bricks have long been used because they’re pleasant to look at", and more a case of "Bricks are considered pleasant to look at, because they have long been used, and have that old-timey feeling"
- imtringued 5y ago
  I don't think so. I see a lot of buildings that are 30 years old and they look ugly because they don't have any complexity in their facade, just a single color of paint. Bricks add natural complexity to a facade. You can make a single color building look nice by adding details.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Actual clay bricks even more so with their imperfect uniformity and consistency. FWIW, at least here, in construction even the thermal insulation clay blocks (basically, any wall-construction material made from clay, those red blocks :)) is called "bricks". They are laid exactly like the regular (uniform, filled) bricks, so I would assume that's what's mostly used in construction everywhere even when not going for looks (they are lighter and have better thermal properties).
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      It's funny how hard it is to fake imperfections. People frequently try to mass-manufacture imperfections by having a larger block with smaller imperfect sub-blocks artistically arranged. It looks fine at first, but once you notice the repetition of the imperfections at regular intervals...
  - yreg 5y ago
    I went to an exhibition (Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty) where they dedicated some part to this. They claim that classical buildings are usually beautiful thanks to all the details and that modernist buildings are usually not so beutiful thanks to the missing details. They also had this experiment where the visitors choose shapes and colours they find pretty. Rectangles and brown-red were the least favourite by far. And then they asked why do we build buildings out of the vomponents we find the most hideous? ---- I have my doubts whether their reasoning is valid, but it is somewhat relevant to your comment.
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Yup. I'm from Amsterdam, the Netherlands as an example. A ton of the city and country has been built with brick. But modern construction typically is built with concrete with a thin facade of brick infront. The brick is just cosmetic, and typically pre-fab in large slabs of 20x20 bricks. For old homes that get renovated, it's popular to keep the old brick facade standing, demolish everything behind it, then build it up again. It's rarely functional. Although there are still a lot of old (mostly built between 1400 - 1950) brick buildings that get maintained with proper masonry, all of which is functional.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > and typically pre-fab in large slabs of 20x20 bricks. which were likely robotically brick-laid
himinlomax 5y ago
> Because they’re pleasant to look at. The article mentions cinder blocks ("CMU") -- those are not typically pleasant to look at. Even the ones that are less unpleasant are usually covered, with sidings or paint.
- webmaven 5y ago
  At some point cinder block construction will become it's own aesthetic (or an element of an aesthetic), perhaps something like the current 'industrial' trend or maybe an architectural equivalent of 'tactical' stylng.
webmaven 5y ago
> Whenever you see a wall being made of red clay bricks, that’s because the builder wants it to look nice. There is a scene in Penny Dreadful (Which is set in a fictionalized Victorian London) where a character laments all the brick buildings that are being built, replacing wood buildings that have "character", because wood "holds its history" unlike bricks which are all the same, forever. The main appeal of bricks is essentially nostalgic, similar to the appeal of low resolution 8-bit graphics. We call one 'traditional' and the other 'retro' but those labels are arbitrary.

dmix 5y ago

So bricklaying it’s basically an ‘artisanal’ type of product not a mass production type of thing that is ill suited for automation anyway. The article links to the MULE product (which was an evolution or pivot of their 15yr attempt at making a traditional bricklaying robot) makes more sense as it takes advantage of the lifting power of machines and uses much larger/longer bricks that would otherwise be too heavy to pick up by humans while accelerating the process. https://www.construction-robotics.com/ https://www.construction-robotics.com/ This is much like why pigeonholing AI into traditional cars is more difficult than say having a fleet of cars region wide which all talk to each other and coordinate movements with roads and crosswalks that are also designed for automated cars.

mr_toad 5y ago

> But brick laying is all about looks. I’ve seen stores with moulded facades designed to look like bricks that are attached to reinforced concrete.

endymi0n 5y ago
From what I'm understanding the hard part of doing that stuff concrete is curation time. There's a lot of projects trying the "easy" route and effectively do additive 3D printing with concrete instead of glue. Conversely, they have the same problems... they look pretty ugly: https://www.realestate.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/15111803/China-3D-printed-house4-2000x15000.jpg https://www.realestate.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/0... Doing it "properly" means building proper moulding, rebar, vibration casting all the stuff that sounds like almost impossible to automate with 2021 technology. Bricks have the advantage that they're pre-cured, so you don't have to wait ages until the wall actually supports something — and if that something is just the next layer.
- candiodari 5y ago
  So what people do is you build the "ugly" way (usually large panels, maybe even prefab, I doubt 3d printing is working that well right now), then cut bricks into 5 slices and stick those slices on top with glue. You can't tell it's not a brick wall except when you're standing right against it. And of course, you only do this on visible walls. It can even be done on top of wood. https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/skills-and-know-how/carpentry-and-woodworking/how-to-install-brick-veneer-on-a-wall https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/skills-and-know-how/carpen...
- cudgy 5y ago
  Paint or stucco would be a big improvement to the aesthetics of the primary exterior surfaces that house … and changing the hideous orange puke trim color.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

> Because they’re pleasant to look at. I expect that this is less a case of "bricks have long been used because they’re pleasant to look at", and more a case of "Bricks are considered pleasant to look at, because they have long been used, and have that old-timey feeling"

imtringued 5y ago
I don't think so. I see a lot of buildings that are 30 years old and they look ugly because they don't have any complexity in their facade, just a single color of paint. Bricks add natural complexity to a facade. You can make a single color building look nice by adding details.
- necovek 5y ago
  Actual clay bricks even more so with their imperfect uniformity and consistency. FWIW, at least here, in construction even the thermal insulation clay blocks (basically, any wall-construction material made from clay, those red blocks :)) is called "bricks". They are laid exactly like the regular (uniform, filled) bricks, so I would assume that's what's mostly used in construction everywhere even when not going for looks (they are lighter and have better thermal properties).
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    It's funny how hard it is to fake imperfections. People frequently try to mass-manufacture imperfections by having a larger block with smaller imperfect sub-blocks artistically arranged. It looks fine at first, but once you notice the repetition of the imperfections at regular intervals...
- yreg 5y ago
  I went to an exhibition (Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty) where they dedicated some part to this. They claim that classical buildings are usually beautiful thanks to all the details and that modernist buildings are usually not so beutiful thanks to the missing details. They also had this experiment where the visitors choose shapes and colours they find pretty. Rectangles and brown-red were the least favourite by far. And then they asked why do we build buildings out of the vomponents we find the most hideous? ---- I have my doubts whether their reasoning is valid, but it is somewhat relevant to your comment.

IkmoIkmo 5y ago

Yup. I'm from Amsterdam, the Netherlands as an example. A ton of the city and country has been built with brick. But modern construction typically is built with concrete with a thin facade of brick infront. The brick is just cosmetic, and typically pre-fab in large slabs of 20x20 bricks. For old homes that get renovated, it's popular to keep the old brick facade standing, demolish everything behind it, then build it up again. It's rarely functional. Although there are still a lot of old (mostly built between 1400 - 1950) brick buildings that get maintained with proper masonry, all of which is functional.

jcelerier 5y ago
> and typically pre-fab in large slabs of 20x20 bricks. which were likely robotically brick-laid

himinlomax 5y ago

> Because they’re pleasant to look at. The article mentions cinder blocks ("CMU") -- those are not typically pleasant to look at. Even the ones that are less unpleasant are usually covered, with sidings or paint.

webmaven 5y ago
At some point cinder block construction will become it's own aesthetic (or an element of an aesthetic), perhaps something like the current 'industrial' trend or maybe an architectural equivalent of 'tactical' stylng.

webmaven 5y ago

> Whenever you see a wall being made of red clay bricks, that’s because the builder wants it to look nice. There is a scene in Penny Dreadful (Which is set in a fictionalized Victorian London) where a character laments all the brick buildings that are being built, replacing wood buildings that have "character", because wood "holds its history" unlike bricks which are all the same, forever. The main appeal of bricks is essentially nostalgic, similar to the appeal of low resolution 8-bit graphics. We call one 'traditional' and the other 'retro' but those labels are arbitrary.