Brick Award 22 winners are announced

Discover the five projects from around the world that won this year, representing the very best in brick construction design.

Every two years the Brick Award, presented by Wienerberger, celebrates the most creative and ground-breaking brick construction projects from around the world. This year a record 789 projects from 53 countries were entered, before five architecture firms emerged victorious. These five projects represent the pinnacle of architectural design using brick.

From a shortlist of 50 projects, the winners were chosen by a jury of international experts. During the judging, they took into consideration cultural context, architectural innovation, traditional construction methods and, for the first time in a post-pandemic world, the project’s impact on the well-being of the people using the space.

Here are the five winning projects that impressed the judges with their innovative design, ingenious use of brick, and aesthetic appeal.

This museum, planned by Studio Zhu Pei, pays homage to the city of Jingdezhen’s extensive history of porcelain production. And what better construction material to celebrate clay’s creative legacy than brick?

Located next to the ruins of the Ming dynasty imperial kiln, this stunning design comprises eight parabolic brick vaults, made from over 2.8 million bricks – a mixture of new and reclaimed brick left over from the demolition of old kilns.

The cigar-shaped vaults themselves vary in height, length and curvature, modelled on the shape of traditional Chinese kilns, arranged side-by-side in a cluster. Structurally, the vaults are double-shell brick walls, built with a traditional method, and filled with concrete.

The museum offers two ground-level and five underground exhibition halls. The buildings are linked by courtyards that allow daylight into the basement halls, while on the upper levels, light enters the building through the vault ends, wall slits, and skylights that reflect the shape of traditional kiln smoke holes.

Demonstrating an artful synergy between the city’s past and innovative design that showcases the possibilities of brick architecture, Studio Zhu Pei secured the ‘Sharing Public Spaces’ category prize as well as the Grand Prize Winner for 2022.

In Babahoyo, Ecuador, brick is a building material for the city’s poorer areas, designed to be plastered, painted over and concealed. The architecture collective Natura Futura wanted to challenge that status quo, creating a mixed-used building that explores the beauty and benefits of brick, while making a powerful statement against the commercialisation of the city, that marginalises its residents.

The House that Inhabits, situated on a thirty-by-twelve metre plot of land, offers commercial space on the ground floor, and on the upper floor an apartment and five rooms housing an educational institution. The building’s aesthetic draws on the design of traditional Latin American houses while boldly re-envisaging how the built environment can make a positive contribution to the quality of urban life.

Located beside the Canal de l’Ourcq in Pantin, this project consists of three buildings containing a total of 88 flats and one commercial space. Architects Avenier Cornejo selected a mixture of red, light grey and dark grey bricks, as a reflective response to the pale yellow palette of the Grands Moulins de Pantin flour mills, built in 1884 and located further west along the canal.

Hand-moulded bricks were laid in a stretcher bond with hollow joints, while window sections are set in contrasting Flemish bond with recessed header bricks to create a relief effect. Continuing the thoughtful use of colour, red brick is complemented by grey metal details, the light grey bricks by green, and the dark grey bricks by brown. The same bricks are also used to pave a path through the old trees in the garden, tying the project together in a synthesis of unity and diversity.

This commercial office project puts long service life and year-round climate stability at the core of its design. The name, ‘2226’, refers to a building technology concept which ensures a stable indoor temperature of between 22 and 26 degrees Celsius.

Designed by Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, the walls of this office building are constructed from two layers of bricks, each 36.5cm think, with unfilled large brick blocks to ensure efficient vapour diffusion. These blocks have a high thermal mass that contributes to the stability of the indoor climate.

The space itself is designed to be simple and accommodate a variety of uses. There is an inner core of stairs, sanitary facilities and kitchenettes, surrounded by a large multipurpose area with partition walls that can be reconfigured for different uses – making it a flexible space that can meet the challenges of modern office life.

Designed as a grid, echoing traditional Chinese courtyard houses, this modern luxury hotel offers a library, guest rooms, reception area and restaurant. Brick walls surround the functional areas, including four gardens, with apertures in the walls to offer carefully curated views into the different spaces of the grid.

This project sensitively combines old and new, respecting the identity of the site while creating a new space for a modern hotel resort. Originally a home for fishermen and farmers, the design preserves the existing cottages and incorporates them with the hotel by referencing traditional Chinese architecture. The construction also made use of recycling and reusing reclaimed bricks, further strengthening the relationship between past and present, tradition and innovation.