Book "Die Erfindung des Verblendsteins" published

No era was as formative for our view of brick today as the 19^th century: From the 1820s onwards, an architectural trend of brick-face construction unfolded that lasted into the early 20^th century, which was contemporarily referred to as 'brick shell construction'. Contrary to what the name suggests, from a technical point of view, brick-faced façades were by no means a crude copy of the internal construction. Against the background of ubiquitous industrialisation, the special aesthetic and structural requirements placed on the bricks used in the outer shell led to the invention of a new type of brick that is still used today: the facing brick.

This first volume of the new series "Berichte zur Bauforschung und Konstruktionsgeschichte" (Reports on Building Archaeology and Construction History) by our chair provides a comprehensive account of the facing brick boom in the German-speaking region of the 19th century. The ubiquitous brick façade design in the architecture of this epoch was associated with diverse questions of production technology and construction. Only by looking at the history of building technology does the brick building shell reveal itself as a complex phenomenon that cannot simply be understood as an artistic trend, but was embedded in a dynamic field of tension between aesthetic ideas, technical possibilities and economic and political conditions.

The book "Die Erfindung des Verblendsteins" can be purchased directly from external page Michael Imhof Verlag or from bookshops, e.g. external page Orell Füssli