Construction Related topic - Essay Example

Literature Review Brick has been a conventional construction material in United Kingdom, Japan and United s of America. In United Kingdom particularly, bricks are used since the earlier centuries for building and construction purposes. Mostly in the outskirts of London, red bricks are usually used. Although many houses in the UK are now built using a mixture of breezeblocks and other materials, many houses are skinned with a layer of bricks on the outside for aesthetic appeal. Transferring in bulk of construction materials such as bricks over long distances was unusual before the period of canals, railways, good roads and huge, dependable weighty goods vehicles.

In an online source, Wikipedia, it states that "Before this time bricks were generally made as close as possible to their point of intended use (it has been estimated that in England in the eighteenth century carrying bricks by horse and cart for ten miles over the poor roads then existing could more than double their price)."Woody Harrelson says in the movie Indecent Proposal (1993), "A common, ordinary brick wants to be something more than it is." This statement conforms to the recent developments organised by the Brick Development Association (BDA), who represents the UK brick industry, looks for new and modern ways on how to utilise effectively this versatile construction material.

BDA is the working group in developing the codes of practice for clay masonry and pavers units. Continues efforts are employed in exploring new products and mixtures for brick by the group since brick is one of Europe's most popular building materials remain intact.Many researches were conducted to explore different mixtures for brick and managing recycled brick. Recycled clay brick aggregates for use in concrete is one of the by-products of bricks that were experimented. "Various physical and mechanical properties of eight different types of aggregates were determined and compared with the limits set out in the British Standards for aggregate from natural sources used in concrete.

The results were also compared with granite aggregate that has been proved a good natural aggregate for producing PCC" (Khalaf, F. M. & DeVenny, A. S. 2005: 456). "The benefits of increased brick recycling are identified, but it is noted that in order for this to be achieved improved technology to allow more efficient recovery of bricks would be necessary" (Beng, R. K., Hughes, T. G. & Kwan, A.S.K. 2004: 155).Other concern is how to do maintenance with the constructed bricks. "Research has investigated the fracture of steel fibre reinforced sprayed concrete under flexural load with the aim of developing a stress-profile model to predict flexural behaviour in the form of a load-deflection response" (Robins, P.J., Austin, S.A. & Jones, P.A. 2003: 225).

It is stated in one internet publication by Ochshorn, J. (1999) that the brick (and steel) could be seen on both the inside and outside gave the construction a perverse kind of integrity, and it served as a role model for numerous other buildings, including the self-consciously Brutalist Hunstanton School in Norfolk, England, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson in 1949."Architects continued to use brick with enthusiasm and, like Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), boasted that in their hands the ordinary brick became "worth its weight in gold.

" Other practitioners, however, were less confident about the appropriateness of brick in modern construction; for them, brick represented a kind of compromise-accepted with various degrees of ambivalence-between the new culture, technology, and aesthetics of the 20th century, and that which preceded it" (Ochshorn, J. 1999).ReferencesAllen, Edward. 1999. Fundamentals of Building Construction. 3rd Edition. New York: Wiley.Plumridge, A. & Meulenkamp, W. 1993. Brickwork: Architecture and Design, New York: Abrams.

Ochshorn, J. 1999 (17 March 2006). Brick in 20th- Century Architecture. [Online]. Available: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jo24/comments/brick.html [28 July 2006]Wikipedia. 2006 (31 July 2006). Brick. [Online]. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick [31 July 2006]BDA: Brick Development Association. 2006. Properties of Bricks & Mortar Generally. [Online]. Available: http://www.brick.org.uk/publications/General.htm [27 July 2006]Khalaf, F. M. & DeVenny, A. S. 2005. Properties of New and Recycled Clay Brick Aggregates for Use in Concrete.

Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, 17(4), 456-464.Beng, R. K., Hughes, T. G. & Kwan, A.S.K. 2004. Bring Recycling and Reuse. Engineering Sustainability, 157(3), 155-161.Robins, P.J., Austin, S.A. & Jones, P.A. 2003. Spatial Distribution of Steel Fibres in Sprayed and Cast Concrete. Magazine of Concrete Research, 55(3), 225-235.