The New Brick Aesthetics
Capturing the architectural styles of the thirties in northern Europe
Capturing the architectural styles of the thirties in northern Europe
New? These buildings are by now around 80-90 years old. Yet, when they were built, the architects of style groups such as the Amsterdam School wanted to express architecture in a new way —a new aesthetic.
Brick expressionism was contemporary to the Bauhaus movement, but represented an opposite approach to the role of aesthetics in architecture. Yes, it led away from the pompous classicism, but it proposed ornaments in the language of factories: bare bricks.
Rather than attempting a photographic essay of the style —it would need much wider breath for that— I focused on the ingenious creativity of the architects and tried to capture some of the beautiful external features of these buildings.