Austral Bricks: Making a Brick Building Look Like Timber

Mornington, flanking Port Phillip Bay on Melbourne’s outskirts, is one of the many “sea change” regions that, in recent years, have attracted retirees many of whom will inevitably require specialist medical and care facilities.

The Mornington Centre is a geriatric evaluation and maintenance facility with 20 double and 20 single rooms in Stage 1A, all with ensuites.

Prominent Melbourne architectural firm, Lyons, won the commission. They took “a bit of a broader approach” by setting themselves the challenge of designing a building that looked more like a beach house than a hospital. With this aspiration they began an extensive exploration into weathered timber as the beach house alternative to the traditional hospital facade.

Their research concluded that timber wasn’t feasible within the project’s capital budget, let alone the Centre’s long term maintenance budget. Brick was finally selected as the only material that met the Centre management’s stringent requirements.

Lyons persisted with the concept, simply rephrasing the question and challenge: how could they make a brick building look timber like? Lyons were no strangers to brick buildings but whereas their past buildings had celebrated brick’s earthy coarseness and strict fabric now they needed to transform the material into something softer and finer that looked like timber.

Lyons recalled receiving a brick embossed with a pattern from Dr Derham Groves, senior lecturer in architecture at The University of Melbourne. This led to the concept of a façade that combined the durability and low maintenance of face brickwork with the texture of the classic timber beach house.

“Several years ago, with a lot of help from Austral Bricks, I made a few bricks that were stamped using a rubber gasket from an old washing machine and a rubber heel from a shoe,” Derham Groves explains.

One of these bricks ended up on Corbett Lyon’s desk and ultimately prompted a protracted and unique development process.

The Lyons team worked over various patterning designs in negative and positive reliefs and soon called in Richard West, Austral Bricks Victorian marketing manager, to explore further options. West quickly concluded that this had to be a product made with a pressed brick because of the level of detail required in the embossing.

The wall texture imparted by embossing comes from shadow rather than superficial patterning such as paint. The designers considered patterns such as ripples, waves, crochet, mobile phone buttons and photographs of people on the beach before developing a series of woodgrain patterns.

The final embossing design mimics a knot hole, with concentric rings like relief lines on a map, a “thumb mark” in one corner, and a pronounced land around the periphery.

Lyons hit upon the idea of using a hardwood flooring analogy. The final design is made up of three “planks”, each made up of two brick colours, one plain and one embossed. The planks vary from light to dark and are laid so that ends line up randomly. “It’s a simple concept but it translates to brick really well,” added Richard West.

The hard work then began for Austral Bricks operations staff led by Craig Black and Lou Sciola, to translate this into fired clay. The century-old brick presses were modified for the task but mostly it was a case of trial and error.

The concentric circles of the embossing are a mere two millimetres wide but despite this fineness they are sharply resolved. The bricks were finally delivered in five colours: Parchment (the lightest), Cream, Mid-Coffee, Full-strength Coffee, and Manganese (darkest).

None of the embossed bricks were cut, requiring the use of plain bricks at corners, parapet edges and around openings.

In all, the bricklayers laid over 50,000 units in this project, earning well deserved praise from the architects.

Lyons also lavished praise on Austral Bricks for its contribution to the quality and outcome of this building, describing the company as an “innovative partner” in the process and praising the keenness and willingness Austral Bricks brought to the project.

Austral Bricks and Lyons are already discussing a new project that will extend the boundaries of brick design even further.