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Because they’re pleasant to look at. Half the time, the wall isn’t even “needed”, other than for aesthetic purposes.

Whenever a wall is purely functional, it’s almost never made of small clay bricks today. I’m talking about foundation walls, subsurface retaining walls, and similar things. The types of walls that aren’t meant to be looked at, but instead meant to hold something back or up.

Whenever you see a wall being made of red clay bricks, that’s because the builder wants it to look nice. I suppose you can cast a concrete wall and apply a façade of bricks. But there’s still a skill required for that final step.

Of course, you may have a different design aesthetic, wherein exposed concrete or large modular sections are both functional and pretty. But brick laying is all about looks.

CMUs are a different story, and kind of prove your point. They’re much larger and so reduce the piecework involved, but still small enough to allow for onsite flexibility in construction.

So bricklaying it’s basically an ‘artisanal’ type of product not a mass production type of thing that is ill suited for automation anyway.

The article links to the MULE product (which was an evolution or pivot of their 15yr attempt at making a traditional bricklaying robot) makes more sense as it takes advantage of the lifting power of machines and uses much larger/longer bricks that would otherwise be too heavy to pick up by humans while accelerating the process.

https://www.construction-robotics.com/

This is much like why pigeonholing AI into traditional cars is more difficult than say having a fleet of cars region wide which all talk to each other and coordinate movements with roads and crosswalks that are also designed for automated cars.

> But brick laying is all about looks.

I’ve seen stores with moulded facades designed to look like bricks that are attached to reinforced concrete.

From what I'm understanding the hard part of doing that stuff concrete is curation time. There's a lot of projects trying the "easy" route and effectively do additive 3D printing with concrete instead of glue. Conversely, they have the same problems... they look pretty ugly: https://www.realestate.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...

Doing it "properly" means building proper moulding, rebar, vibration casting all the stuff that sounds like almost impossible to automate with 2021 technology.

Bricks have the advantage that they're pre-cured, so you don't have to wait ages until the wall actually supports something — and if that something is just the next layer.

So what people do is you build the "ugly" way (usually large panels, maybe even prefab, I doubt 3d printing is working that well right now), then cut bricks into 5 slices and stick those slices on top with glue. You can't tell it's not a brick wall except when you're standing right against it.

And of course, you only do this on visible walls. It can even be done on top of wood.

https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/skills-and-know-how/carpen...

Paint or stucco would be a big improvement to the aesthetics of the primary exterior surfaces that house … and changing the hideous orange puke trim color.

> Because they’re pleasant to look at.

I expect that this is less a case of "bricks have long been used because they’re pleasant to look at", and more a case of "Bricks are considered pleasant to look at, because they have long been used, and have that old-timey feeling"

I don't think so. I see a lot of buildings that are 30 years old and they look ugly because they don't have any complexity in their facade, just a single color of paint. Bricks add natural complexity to a facade. You can make a single color building look nice by adding details.

Actual clay bricks even more so with their imperfect uniformity and consistency.

FWIW, at least here, in construction even the thermal insulation clay blocks (basically, any wall-construction material made from clay, those red blocks :)) is called "bricks".

They are laid exactly like the regular (uniform, filled) bricks, so I would assume that's what's mostly used in construction everywhere even when not going for looks (they are lighter and have better thermal properties).

It's funny how hard it is to fake imperfections.

People frequently try to mass-manufacture imperfections by having a larger block with smaller imperfect sub-blocks artistically arranged.

It looks fine at first, but once you notice the repetition of the imperfections at regular intervals...

I went to an exhibition (Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty) where they dedicated some part to this. They claim that classical buildings are usually beautiful thanks to all the details and that modernist buildings are usually not so beutiful thanks to the missing details.

They also had this experiment where the visitors choose shapes and colours they find pretty. Rectangles and brown-red were the least favourite by far. And then they asked why do we build buildings out of the vomponents we find the most hideous?

----

I have my doubts whether their reasoning is valid, but it is somewhat relevant to your comment.

Also people like to think they are buying something substantial that is literally made of bricks - even if those bricks are just a façade.

This is the reason for a lot of design trends - This morning I have been:

* On a laminate wooden desk, in a room with laminate wooden floor (The same logic - neither are real wood, just an old-timey construction).

* Wearing a knitted jumper (which again could be considered stylish from an old-timey perspective, as the manufacturing could have used less thin cotton, but thick cotton is supposed to make it look hand woven)

* In a office which has LED lights hanging down which are designed to look like exposed old lightbulbs (same logic)

* While typing email on my laptop (the logo to which is an envelope, arguably to remind you of the old-timey mail system).

Heck, even my headphones have some fake leather on them, which is effectively just a fake material just to look like older materials which are actually less soft, and my coat has some fluff that is designed to make it look like coats used to look like when they were made from animal fur (even though, now, that is considered abhorrent, fake fur is still a thing, everyone just knows it's simulating the old material for whatever reason, because that was the old style).

So I think design trends in general come from historic use-cases in the context.

These aren't always aesthetic though, sometimes they are practically: leveraging knowledge of the well-known tech to help people understand the new.

Yup. I'm from Amsterdam, the Netherlands as an example. A ton of the city and country has been built with brick. But modern construction typically is built with concrete with a thin facade of brick infront. The brick is just cosmetic, and typically pre-fab in large slabs of 20x20 bricks.

For old homes that get renovated, it's popular to keep the old brick facade standing, demolish everything behind it, then build it up again.

It's rarely functional.

Although there are still a lot of old (mostly built between 1400 - 1950) brick buildings that get maintained with proper masonry, all of which is functional.

> and typically pre-fab in large slabs of 20x20 bricks.

which were likely robotically brick-laid

> Because they’re pleasant to look at.

The article mentions cinder blocks ("CMU") -- those are not typically pleasant to look at. Even the ones that are less unpleasant are usually covered, with sidings or paint.

At some point cinder block construction will become it's own aesthetic (or an element of an aesthetic), perhaps something like the current 'industrial' trend or maybe an architectural equivalent of 'tactical' stylng.

> Whenever you see a wall being made of red clay bricks, that’s because the builder wants it to look nice.

There is a scene in Penny Dreadful (Which is set in a fictionalized Victorian London) where a character laments all the brick buildings that are being built, replacing wood buildings that have "character", because wood "holds its history" unlike bricks which are all the same, forever.

The main appeal of bricks is essentially nostalgic, similar to the appeal of low resolution 8-bit graphics. We call one 'traditional' and the other 'retro' but those labels are arbitrary.

This (and similar comments below) are a very American view of the situation.

To be honest, as a kiwi I was the same when the first moved to the UK "why are they building NEW buildings out of brick???" It's because there's so much clay here, the materials to make bricks are abundant and this is similar in other parts of Europe.

Brick is also more resilient to the weather here, if they build hosues with wood like NZ (or America) they'd degrade incredibly quickly.

Agreed. Bricks aren’t great for construction. Not structural, poor R-value, a ton of labor.

Just have concrete poured or stick frame and a fake brick facade. Will probably last longer as well.

Seems like the wrong problem to solve.

Bricks can last a long time.

Brick houses also hold their value well.

No one cares about a brick facade.

Also why do you say bricks aren't structural? I assumed those 100 year old brick houses used bricks for structural support.

Bricks are for decorative purposes nowadays (pretty siding). They aren't practical as you won't meet code for insulation. You will also need to frame another interior wall for vapor control.

A single layer brick wall isn't structural.

There are foam bricks which meet the insulation codes in europe - in one wall with no additions. Will all be special waste though one day.

> A single layer brick wall isn't structural

My 92-year old house with single layer brick walls says otherwise. (And yes, it insulates badly, but it kept standing through a lot of storms.)

> My 92-year old house with single layer brick walls says otherwise. (

Not structural by current building standards. No doubt it is carrying a load today, bit you can't build a house that way anymore.

Structural bricks absolutely suck if you are in a high earthquake risk zone. Earthquakes or slumping really screw up brick buildings (and brick façades).

Even in 100 year old brick houses (like the 1920s craftsman I once owned), the brick is almost always non-structural. Only in old urban commercial buildings do you typically find structural bricks.

What you are talking about are facing bricks, which are used on the facade. In Europe almost all new residential construction is made from masonry blocks, which are basically just bigger bricks.

They are structural (in terms of compression, but have low tensile strength which is probably why they aren't popular in North America)

They have a good R-value

They are easy to work with

We are building a house right now, and the cheapest, quickest and easiest part so far has been building the walls. We are using clay blocks[0] which are R-10. Compared to other tasks no specialised equipment is needed, it's literally just manual labour. When you get to a corner or window, they can easily be cut with an angle grinder or even by hand (for a rougher finish). The house is two floors and the exterior walls for each floor took less than a week to build. It's quicker (building forms takes a long time), cheaper, better insulating and better for the environment than monolithic concrete.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__T8PWnntkU - Not this exact product, but this was the best explanation I could find in English.

> but have low tensile strength which is probably why they aren't popular in North America)

out of curiosity, why do the blocks need to be different in North America?

The person appears to be from Europe. If HN is the bulk of their exposure to mundane topics regarding the US I can see why they'd be unaware that California building codes are not representative of the rest of the nation.

But not your Texan school textbook regulations…

Meh, every state has crap curriculum. They all just skip different chapters of history or science depending on the way the local political winds blow.

Tensile strength is equally important when you have strong winds.

The half of Florida that's made out of masonry (typically cinderblock) does just fine.

It is a great question, but it's like jumping on refactoring: you'll solve all the problems that were obvious with the old solution, but introduce new ones that you didn't think of that were already solved by the old one.

Basically, "thermal blocks", which is mostly what's used in construction in areas where they are used (Europe, rather than filled-in bricks) need to be modified to accommodate imperfections: you need half bricks, third-bricks, and they are easy to make on the spot.

For automated construction, you'd have to have a bunch of these pre-made, and the larger the block you are building with, the more types of those smaller ones you'll need.

These blocks are also relatively simple to put electrical and plumbing installations in (it's a lot more demanding to make "channels" in concrete than bricks).

Anyway, block construction is way cheaper than eg. gypsum board construction for interior walls in Serbia, and other than taking a lot more space, being heavier, and requiring curing time, it has a bunch of better properties (acoustic, thermal,...). The price not being high is actually the reason this is not further improved.

Filled-in bricks are mostly used for decoration of outside walls these days (and usually as plasterboards these days), and as far as paying for things go, humans will happily pay the most for good looks!

Bricks are easy to maintain and remodel and repair. It's a modular system.

> The question I would have around automated building construction is "why use bricks?".

Well, eventually roads will also be optimised for self-driving cars not human drivers. But until then, self-driving car have to interoperate with the existing, pervasive, legacy infrastructure, even if it isn't optimal for their needs.

Three dudes can do the bulk of a cinder-block foundation in a few workdays with no special equipment. Blocks and bricks are cheap to work with because there are no special material handling requirements to increase overhead costs. This approach is economically viable pretty much everywhere except the urban areas most heavily represented on HN.

When you get into fancy high dollar construction in HCOL areas where time costs more money that's when you get bigger blocks that need machines to move them or you get formed and poured structures.

>The problem seems to be people have a emotional idea of what a dream house is, an idea that is firmly stuck in the red brick house of 1970's sitcoms.

Your fully automated house-extrusion company isn't going to have many customers, especially after you explain to people why their ideal dream home is obsolete and that they should pay you for a plascrete tube to live in instead because the profit margins are better.

Those "emotional ideas" are what drive market incentives, you can't simply ignore them.

Plasteel is even better.

> ideal dream home

It’s weird to focus on the upper end of the market for a thing like this. If the utility in automated construction is to reduce costs, it might make more sense to consider the more price-conscious portion of the market. I.e. starter homes and the like. My guess is that since there are so many other large costs involve in home construction, automating this one component just doesn’t make a significant price impact in almost any market segment.

My brother lives in an apartment building from the 1930s made of bricks. It is absolutely horrendous.

pre-cast concrete slabs made offsite and then lifted by cranes to lock on to make walls. eg this builder's projects https://www.providenthousing.com/