Bricks Expressionism, a new asthetic

New? These buildings are by now around 80-90 years old. Yet, when they were built, the architects of style groups such as the Amsterdam School wanted to show how the good old bricks were good enough to create a new aesthetic.

Brick expressionism was contemporary to the Bauhaus movement, but represented an opposite approach to the role of aesthetics in architecture. Yes, it led away from the pompous classicism, but it proposed ornaments in the language of factories: bare bricks. It is perhaps no surprise that many buildings in this style were conceived with the purpose of housing working class people.

Rather than attempting a photographic essay of the style —it would need much wider breath for that— I focused on the ingenious creativity of the architects and tried to capture some of the beautiful external features of these buildings.

I decided to portray the objects in black and white because by using an orange filter the contours of the bricks would come up nicely. Another side effect is that the same filter makes the green of grass and trees appear darker giving the images a bit of drama.

—Miguel Albrecht