In this day and age of cost saving innovations and modular concepts in the construction industry all too often the beauty of hand made elements are overlooked. It's easy to understand why especially when cost and budget is very often a factor. Why spend money on expensive handmade materials that offer very little advantage over factory made, mass-produced materials that are considerably cheaper.
For centuries Thailand had a clay brick industry. If you were building something from brick then those bricks were hand made in hot dusty kilns scattered around the country. Usually these were small family businesses that simply provided bricks and earthenware to the local construction industries.
Nowadays you buy bricks from massive construction suppliers and I assume most of them are made in China or in huge automated factories in the industrial zones of outer Bangkok.
I recently stumbled across a lovely family still hand making clay bricks to order. They had a small business that was fourth generation on the outskirts of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and it made such an impression on me that I was determined to incorporate their bricks into my next project. Imagine their shock when I ordered 30,000 of them hahaha.
Here are the two tiny little kilns that the lovely husband and wife team do all the bricks in.....
After they bricks are made they hand paint every brick. Here are some pics of me experimenting with the green colour that I have decided on for the elements of the villa.
After the green paint has cured each brick gets treated with a propane blow torch to give it a unique aged look. I had great fun playing with the blow torch until I settled on the look and style I wanted and then agree with the owners how to do on each brick. (All 30,000 of them!)
After we agreed on the colour of the bricks and the texture I went back down to Phuket and waited for them to call me for the first round of QA - they wanted to show me the clay bricks as they came out of the kiln before they started the painting and burning process so I headed up to Chiang Mai after a couple of months to see how they were progressing.They had made the first few thousand and were excited to show me......
They were just great and each one had the little imperfections that gave them their own character - that is the beauty of hand made clay brick and was exactly the result i was looking for. Another month passed and they summoned me to Chiang Mai again to inspect the first round of Painted bricks. I was so happy and I just love how I am helping these small business owners put money in their pockets.....
So I know by now readers you are thinking so what am I going to do with all these green bricks? My plan is to use them as external elements on a villa project that I will go in to more detail about on my next post. Here are some of the renders that include the green brick walls. I plan to use them as part of the villa boundary facade facing the road and also as partitions within the villa where airflow is required for venitlation.....
I hope you enjoyed this little story about my green bricks. Soon I will be able to update you with pictures of them going into place as the villa project is nearing that phase of the construction schedule. I cant wait to se how it will look. Soon I will be heading back up to Chiang Mai to see the next round of bricks. Thanks for reading and until next time Hivers!