MASTERPIECE

It is impossible to imagine our society without bricks . The use of bricks has a long history that began some 5,000 years ago. It flourished in Western Europe from the 12th century onwards. This was mainly due to monks, who built their abbeys out of bricks. With the ban on wooden houses due to the risk of fire, cities also started to ‘brick up’, so to speak. The use of bricks increased exponentially until the 20th century. But today, we increasingly speak of the end of the brick era. This is because the process of producing bricks, in brick kilns, releases a lot of CO₂. New methods of building without bricks are therefore being sought. Meanwhile, the brick industry is developing an energy-neutral firing process.