BRICK RED

HAMBURG‘S ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE –
A TRIBUTE TO THE HUMBLE BRICK

Ham­burg main­tained its love for brick-work over cen­turies. The love affair began after the Great Fire in 1842, which destroyed about 20 per­cent of all build­ings in Ham­burg. Bricks became a high­ly sought-after non-flam­ma­ble con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al, and inspired some impres­sive pieces of archi­tec­ture. When UNESCO grant­ed world her­itage sta­tus in 2015 to the Spe­ich­er­stadt and Kon­tor-vier­tel dis­tricts and the Chile­haus build­ing, an icon of Brick Expres­sion­ism by Fritz Höger, this love was rekin­dled. A trail of red brick façades blazes through the city and makes up a large share of its archi­tec­tur­al heritage.

Until today, bricks remain a favourite ele­ment of local façade design both for res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ings. Hamburg‘s iden­ti­ty is found­ed on the var­ied shades of red of the brick façades and the stur­di­ness of the fired stone. Not only are bricks a defin­ing styl­is­tic ele­ment and extreme­ly weath­er-hardy, their dis­tinc­tive colour­ing also tells the sto­ry of what they are made of and how the were fired: They con­sist of clay that is processed, formed and fired in a man­u­fac­tur­ing process.

The tra­di­tion­al fir­ing method in a ring kiln makes each brick unique. The bricks used for the Tichel­haus are man­u­fac­tured the old-fash­ioned way: In a hand-fired ring kiln.

The mate­r­i­al qual­i­ties and colours of brick are an inte­gral ele­ment of Hamburg‘s cityscape and a spe­cial part of its identity.

BRICKS FROM THE REGION

Clay from the Elb­marsch region pro­vides the raw mate­r­i­al for the Tichel­haus bricks. Man­u­fac­tur­er Rusch burns the bricks in a tra­di­tion­al ring kiln. The brick­yard, found­ed in 1881, is the last of over 100 that exist­ed between Ham­burg and Cux­haven in the sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tu­ry. The skill and knowl­edge required for pro­cess­ing the nat­ur­al mate­r­i­al is passed on through generati-ons, and each of the hand-made bricks is unique. Togeth­er, they cre­ate the vibrant feel of the Tichel­haus façade – a façade made of a nat­ur­al mate­r­i­al com­ing straight from the Elbe river‘s glacial val­ley. 

FROM CLAY TO BRICK

01. CLAY PRODUCTION

Our bricks are a gen­uine­ly nat­ur­al prod­uct, con­sist­ing of 90% clay and 10% sand. Clay from the local Elb­marsch region makes up about 90% of the clay component.

02. PRODUCTION AND DRYING OF THE BLANKS

The clay that is sourced is com­bined and thor­ough­ly blend­ed with the sand, and com­pressed to remove even the last impu­ri­ty. Once a strand of clay has been shaped, it is cut to the desired width. The blanks pro­duced this way are then stacked and kept in dry­ing cham­bers until they are ready to be fired.

03. THE HISTORIC RING KILN

Once dried, the unfin­ished bricks are brought to the cen­tral piece of the brick­yard: the ring kiln. They are man­u­al­ly loaded into the kiln and stacked, lay­er by lay­er, until they sit tight­ly under the ceil­ing. The kiln is fired, and the fire is kept burn­ing dur­ing the whole pro­duc­tion cycle, with not even a day‘s break. The mas­ters keep it burn­ing, care­ful­ly con­trol­ling it in the kiln, hour by hour, day by day, month by month. The bricks are fired fol­low­ing ancient tra­di­tions, using hard coal and wood. Shov­el by shov­el, the fuels are thrown into the kiln through holes in the ceiling.

04. FIRING THE BRICKS

After about 16 days in the oven, the blanks have turned into gen­uine clink­ers. They are removed from the oven in the same way as they were loaded: by hand. They are stacked onto carts inside the kiln and pushed out.

04. THE FINISHED BRICK

The fin­ished bricks are sort­ed (man­u­al­ly, of course) by colour, appear­ance and qual­i­ty into the dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of the prod­uct range. This process relies on the expe­ri­ence of the brick­mak­er. Every sin­gle brick has to be inspect­ed and sort­ed before it can be packed onto pal­lets and bundled.

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