Brick Gothic Architecture

Brick Gothic is a distinctive regional style of Gothic architecture common in Northeast and Central Europe, especially in and around the Baltic Sea, found across present day Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland. It developed from the twelfth century onward, once baked red brick reached Northwestern and Central Europe, through an earlier Brick Romanesque phase, and lasted until the sixteenth century, when it was succeeded by Brick Renaissance architecture. The style arose because much of its region lacks accessible stone, making brick the practical building material, and its buildings are marked by a creative structuring of walls using contrasts of red brick, glazed brick and white lime plaster rather than the figurative sculpture common to other Gothic traditions, favoring monumental but comparatively simple forms.