Brick Expressionism

Brick Expressionism is a variant of Expressionist architecture that uses brick, tile or clinker brick as its primary visible building material, developed in Germany and the Netherlands with most of its buildings erected in the 1920s, chiefly in the cities of northern Germany and the Ruhr industrial region, with the Amsterdam School standing as its Dutch counterpart. Unlike the contemporary Bauhaus movement, which rejected applied ornamentation, Brick Expressionist architects created a distinctive ornamental vocabulary of rough, angular or pointed forms achieved through the deliberate patterned setting of brick rather than through applied decoration. Architects used colored clinker bricks ranging from brown through red to purple, alternated courses to create recessed and protruding surface effects, and sometimes incorporated damaged brick wasters as deliberate decorative elements, often combining these techniques with architectural sculpture in clinker or ceramic to enrich building facades.