ABSTRACT
The dimensions of bricks as a building element related from their first use until today to the size and weight that can be moved by the bricklayer with one hand while the other hand remains free to use tools, such as the trowel, thus enabling feasible and fast ways of construction. Hence bricks are one of the oldest quasi standardised building elements known to man. They have been used since circa 7,500 BC. Evidence of this was found in the Neolithic town of Çayönü in south-eastern Anatolia, and also in Jericho in Palestine and Catal Hüyük in Western Turkey. The latter is thought to have had up to 8,000 inhabitants. These Neolithic settlements provided a fertile context for the development of town planning, architecture, agriculture, technology and religion (Gates 2003). Charles Gates wrote with regard to the use of brick in Jericho during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic phases A and B, circa 8,500 to 6,000 BC:
Spread over an area of ca. 4ha, the PPNA settlement has yielded both houses and a fortification wall. The houses are round, and made of sun-dried mud bricks with a distinctive rounded top (‘hog backed’, or ‘planoconvex’) … Jericho in the subsequent PPNB featured new architectural forms, possible indicators of social changes. House builders abandoned the round house in favour of the rectangular rooms arranged around a central courtyard. Construction used a different form of air-dried mud brick: ‘cigar-shaped’ bricks with finger impressions across the top to key in the mud mortar.
(Gates 2003: 18–19) The ADF Wool Warehouse in Juanicó (Uruguay, 1992–94) designed by Eladio Dieste displays one of his key inventions: the Gaussian vaults. The interior view (bottom) demonstrates how double-curved surfaces may be used to modulate light conditions inside of the built volume. Photo credit: Defne Sunguroğlu. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315881294/8c633402-ec95-4ecb-990e-cc99cb482b6f/content/fig10_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Initial physical modelling studies served to deduce the behaviour of the combination of bending rods and bricks and the possibility of self-stabilisation of such a system. In addition, the parameterisation of the slender bending rods under torsional buckling was worked out. MSc Dissertation of Defne Sungurolu, October 2007. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315881294/8c633402-ec95-4ecb-990e-cc99cb482b6f/content/fig10_2_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>