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DESIGN INSIGHT: Beauty of Bare Brickwork
Over the years spanning architectural design, a lot has been said and written about bare brickwork walls in interiors — rural, rustic, contemplated negligence, industrial — and its prevalence in domestic interiors is nothing new — brickwork and artisans of bricklaying were highly sought and indeed travelled far and wide for their appointments as recent as last century.
Back then bricklaying wasn’t just relegated to being rural and rustic, some of the finest buildings were designed and built using beautiful brick and stone works -but like all forms of art that require hard labour of love, patience and precision, sadly its a dying art — I cannot imagine any young adult taking it up as a form of livelihood today.
One of the things I love about the villa we are fortunate enough to call our home in Abu Dhabi is its long entrance foyer with bare stonewalls. Granted it is reconstituted stone (ground stone, pigmented with colour and shaped into different sized bricks) but the effect is just as amazing. I particularly love the effect at night when the ceiling spot lights are on — the light bounces off the uneven stones creating shadows and mystery along the long foyer and just beyond, through the clear sliding doors the shimmering water of the pool reflects on stones giving them a beautiful serene aqua hue.