New process enables individual design of bricks
Keller companies and researchers from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts have jointly developed a new process for manufacturing bricks. This allows the surface of the bricks to be designed individually and yet in series. The method goes back to a master's thesis.
Keller Unternehmungen, based in Pfungen, and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts(HSLU) have developed a process for customising bricks. It allows builders and architects new design options in series production for the visible surface of the bricks, according to a media release.
According to the new process, the natural irregularities of historic bricks in texture and colour are brought to bear. This means that the uniqueness of a stone can be used specifically to design a façade.
“Our goal was to revive and complement these deviations, which have largely disappeared in modern brick production,” project manager Cornelia Gassler is quoted as saying.
With the cooperation of an interdisciplinary research team consisting of product designers, mechanical engineers and architects, modular tool attachments for the design of the brick surface were thus created. “The production of bricks is a technique that is thousands of years old,” Gassler continues. “Our approach, with its technically simple attachments, reflects that, but at the same time can be controlled very precisely thanks to modern digital control.”
In modern industrial brickmaking, uniformity is usually sought in bricks. Cornelia Gassler initially questioned this in her Master’s thesis in 2018 and received the Master of Arts Design promotional award from HSLU for it. In 2019, this developed into the research project ExxE, funded by Innosuisse, the Swiss Agency for Innovation Promotion, in cooperation with Keller companies.
The new designs are now available under the kelesto Signa brand from Keller Systeme AG.