SubscribeSign In
All Photos/exterior/siding material : brick/roofline : flat/siding material : glass

Exterior Brick Siding Material Flat Roofline Glass Siding Material Design Photos and Ideas

The 1936 Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin, marks the first Usonian-style home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The bedroom is elevated around five meters above the forest floor, and the space beneath has—like the green roof—been given back to the Bushveld. “Naturally, this space is shadier than the surrounding forest, so it creates a different microclimate for different species to flourish in that area,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “It’s an area that we have cultivated.”
The view from the rear lawn towards the house. The outdoor living room is accessible from the family room (on the right) and the living room (on the left).
To the front, the gardens are laid around a central lawn with a circling driveway which provides parking. There is also a garage for family cars.
Arcadia windows and doors with bronze finishes help achieve the homeowners' goal of indoor/outdoor living.
DGN Studio renovated and extended a semidetached Victorian terrace near London Fields for clients Rebecca and Roman. The rear extension is defined by a material palette of exposed concrete and white-oiled oak, which was chosen for its durability, as well as its warm texture and grain. “We are very aware of the dialogue around the sustainability of concrete as a building material, so we were keen to make sure its use was related to a specific set of practical tasks for which it would stand the test of time,” says DGN studio cofounder Geraldine Ng.
Inspired by ancient ruins, Frankie Pappas crafts a green-roofed, brick guesthouse that connects deeply with nature in the South African Bushveld.
“The clients are passionate about nature conservation,’ says architect Ant Vervoot. “They know how every plant, insect, and animal fits into the greater ecosystem—their curiosity about the Bushveld is insatiable and inspiring. It really is an amazing thing to be around them in the bush.”
House of the Tall Chimneys is entirely off the grid. Power is generated with solar panels; black and gray water is contained and managed before it’s further filtered by the undergrowth; and potable water is collected from the nearby stream. “More important than these technological fixes, however, is the fact that the building requires very little in terms of resource input in order to function successfully,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “Careful design is probably the most fundamental aspect in designing environmentally sustainable buildings.”
“We asked Frankie for a home, and they built us a fantasy,” remarked the clients when House of the Tall Chimneys and House of the Big Arch were completed.
The guesthouse is located in a private reserve in the Waterberg, a mountainous region about three hours from Johannesburg.
The green roof was designed to give back the space that was taken up by the building’s footprint to the Bushveld and the animals. It is planted with site-endemic grasses, aloes, and creepers. “What pleases me one hell of a lot is that the building is completely hidden when you’re more than 20 meters away from the structure,” says Vervoort. “It’s invisible, and I’m super proud of that. The most important aspect of this building was to revere the site. I use the word revere because we didn’t just respect it—we treated this site as if it were God. I think we should do that more as architects.”
“The chimneys are in essence two big columns with some beams between them, and they look a bit like rugby posts,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “The crossbars of the rugby posts hold up the timber beams.”
A brick path leads through the forest to the entrance of House of the Tall Chimneys. “Bricks are a really cost effective way of creating space,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “Over and above that, when used correctly, bricks create complex patterns that I don’t think it’s possible to mimic using other materials.”
The entrance to House of the Big Arch is a nine-meter-tall passage, which creates a high-pressure system that pulls cool air into the kitchen.
House of the Tall Chimneys is the guesthouse of House of the Big Arch, also by Frankie Pappas. The two buildings share the same material palette, and are linked by a long path through the forest.
The aluminum windows are powder coated in a charcoal color, which is intended to match the shadows created by the forest and help the building further blend in.
The team lidar scanned around 40,000 square meters of the forested site to create a 3D model—including trees, branches, and roots—that would allow them to accurately determine how to position and design the building to have minimal impact on the surrounding trees. “We then designed a seriously thin building that could slot between the trees,” says architect Ant Vervoort.
Located in Providence, Rhode Island, the American Woolens Dye house is a brick and timber structure that was originally built in 1880. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it served as a textile mill before a thoughtful and extensive renovation transformed the property into a gorgeous live/work space.
The home’s original footprint, circular front driveway, and original brick facade were preserved.
As the midcentury era was winding down, architect George Smart was commissioned to design a low-slung brick and glass house at 2300 Timber Lane in Houston’s River Oaks neighborhood. The home would go on to serve as the clergy house for St. Luke’s United Methodist Church for 49 years.
The ground-floor living space looks inward to the courtyard and is protected on all other sides by the mass of the building and the blank brick facade.
A side patio leads from the front of the home to the courtyard. The same red bricks used for the facade have been used for the paving to create a seamless fabric that wraps the built form and the site.
The slim profile of the red bricks used in the facade creates a textured surface across the monolithic form, while red and brown tones of each brick create an organic, varied pattern of color.
The entire home is wrapped in a brick "skin" that extends onto the ground at the front and sides of the home. The entrance is found through a simple void in the facade beside a pond with floating vegetation that hints at the verdant interior.
The long, low home sits unobtrusively atop the ridge. Large areas of glazing open the home to the landscape to the south.
An enclosed porch with a fireplace sits between the living wing and the services wing, providing a pivotal point from which the home fans out.
The simple, affordable material palette allows the home to sit comfortably within the natural landscape.
The home is oriented to take in views of Mount Canobolas in the Great Dividing Range. With an elevation of 4,577 feet, the extinct volcano is the highest mountain in the region.
Floor-to-ceiling glazing ensures natural light is plentiful throughout the home. The silvertop ash cladding on the exterior will develop a silver-gray patina over time.
The home is respectful to the rural site and champions the view. Thanks to the prefab construction, there was very little earthwork and minimal site impact. This approach also helped to eliminate potential weather delays—which would have been likely as, owing to the high altitude, the area frequently experiences frost and snow in winter months.
The mostly blank brick-clad exterior belies the complex geometries that inform the multilevel plan inside. The windows are arranged to frame specific views—including the steeple of the nearby St. Michael’s Church—while retaining privacy from the street.
The firm worked with landscape design company Alchemie to plan the landscaping and create a variety of seating areas throughout the property.
The addition houses a kitchen and family room on the main level, and the master bedroom and roof deck above. Sliding glass doors now allow generous sightlines to the yard, and also convey a lightness to the new architecture that contrasts with the character of the old.
For the new addition, new brick syncs with the old, while blackened steel provides a modern counterpoint to the historic facade.
The box-shaped extension plays off the familiar farmhouse typology, creating a series of intriguing contrasts.
The brickwork of the original gabled farmhouse was painted white, referencing the local vernacular, and a new corrugated metal roof was added.
Building the addition upward instead of outward allowed for more space and better views without excavating across the hilltop.
Large timber-framed glass sliding doors open the kitchen/dining space to the rear courtyard on two sides.
Built in 1949, Byrdview is one of four residential homes designed by the famed midcentury architect William Pereira, known for his futuristic designs that include the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco.
The new addition opens the interiors to the garden with floor-to-ceiling windows and easy access to the yard.
In Rancho Mirage, California, a tired 1960s house is completely transformed with new features and materials that blend midcentury charm with contemporary taste. Despite a 1984 remodel, the desert midcentury that a couple recently purchased as their vacation home near Palm Springs had long suffered signs of aging with outdated finishes, deferred maintenance, and ill-proportioned rooms. Eager to breathe new life into the 1960s dwelling, the homeowners looked to Seattle–based Stuart Silk Architects for a gut renovation to bring their holiday home to modern standards.
The Thunderbird Heights house is set on a plateau above Coachella Valley and backs up to the Santa Rosa mountains to the south and west. The home, originally built in the 1960s and later renovated in the 1980s, was given a fresh, midcentury-inspired revamp by Stuart Silk Architects.
Considered the finest residential example of International Style architecture in Denver, the 1951 Joshel House was in serious disrepair when Dominick Sekich and Scott Van Vleet bought it in 2013. They embarked on a major renovation to re-create the vision of the original designers, Joseph and Louise Marlow.
Also known as Still Bend, Schwartz House was designed as part of a LIFE Magazine competition in 1938, in which the publication commissioned eight architects to design a "dream house" for four typical American families. The design became reality when Bernard Schwartz commissioned the architect to build the home for his family in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Modified for the site, the 1940 house boasts classic Wright touches like red tidewater cypress board, huge windows, and interiors in harmony with the natural surroundings.
The solution to the problem of the telephone pole was to place the entry at the side. “Putting the home entry on the side allows one to create full rooms at each end of the house without running a hallway through them,” says Wu.
Stuart Silk Architects made significant changes to the exterior with their addition of beige brick walls, thin custom-designed columns, steel trellises, and large roof overhangs.
Deep roof overhangs protect the interior from the hot desert sun. New, thermally broken doors and glass were installed throughout the house.
An bird's eye view of the home, which sits roughly in the center of the 1.3-acre lot. The swimming pool was relocated from its original location in the courtyard to the back yard.
The glazed facade is broken up by classic midcentury lines.
The rear view of the home.
In the entrance, a team with the general contracting firm Martha uncovered an abstract mural that Engels painted himself and then plastered over. He also made the geometric door handle. Simon speculates that Engels sourced the marble, found all over the house, from Expo ’58, after the pavilions had been dismantled.
Villa Engels, the home of the esteemed Belgian modernist Lucien Engels (1928–2016), was falling apart when its second owners bought it in 2013. Yet due to its heritage status, any changes they planned would have to be approved by the provincial preservation office. Engels completed the elongated, cantilevered residence in 1958, the same year he finalized the master plan for Expo ’58, the Brussels World’s Fair that famously featured the Atomium.
12