BRICK



Completed:

09.04.2025

Format:

Handmade / Photobook / Installation

Publisher:

Personal

BRICK: Material, Process, and Industrial Rhythm

BRICK is an interdisciplinary design project that explores cement block production through material properties, manufacturing processes, and production rhythms. Combining handmade practices, photography, book design, and installation, the project examines the relationships between raw materials, tools, machinery, and repetitive procedures within an industrial environment.

The project begins with the everyday process of making cement blocks. Mixing, moulding, drying, stacking, inspecting, and transporting are observed as individual stages within a continuous production sequence. These procedures establish specific rhythms through movement, timing, repetition, and operational order. BRICK investigates the continuity between these stages and how precision, timing, and repetition influence the final form of the material.

The project also documents the coexistence of traditional tools and modern machinery within the same production environment. Traces of manual handling, mechanical vibrations, worn surfaces, and material residues collectively form the visual characteristics of the factory. By observing these details, the project identifies connections between different tools, materials, and manufacturing methods.

The physical transformation of cement, from a fluid mixture into a solid block, provides a central point of reference. In parallel, repeated actions develop into recognisable sequences of production. BRICK connects the process of material solidification with the rhythm of repeated procedures, translating these observations into visual expressions through photography, typography, book structures, and spatial installation.

Material and Craft

The installation incorporates cement, sand, gravel, rusty nails, round-head nails, discarded reinforcing bars, bolts, and other industrial materials collected from the factory site. These materials retain surface characteristics developed through use, oxidation, weathering, and manufacturing, establishing a direct visual and tactile connection with their original environment.

Cement is explored through its physical transformation from a fluid state to a solid form. Its weight, texture, and moulding properties provide a structural foundation for the work. Metal fragments introduce contrasts through their hardness, oxidation, irregular shapes, and surface conditions. Together, these materials establish formal relationships between fluidity and solidification, regularity and irregularity, and smoothness and roughness.

The handmade elements and typographic experiments extend this material investigation. The formation and arrangement of letterforms draw inspiration from the geometry of cement blocks, physical pressure, weight, and construction structures. Typography functions not only as a carrier of information but also as a visual component, using repetition, arrangement, and formal variation to echo the processes of pressing, moulding, and assembling.

Book and Documentation

The photobook documents the factory environment, focusing on the coexistence of traditional production tools and modern mechanical equipment, alongside material conditions, operational details, and spatial characteristics across different stages of production.

The dimensions, thickness, and physical volume of the book reference the proportions and material presence of a cement block. This establishes a physical relationship between the publication and the object it documents. The book therefore functions not only as a medium of documentation but also as an alternative interpretation of material form.

Photography serves primarily as a method of observation and documentation. Through sequential images of tools, machinery, material surfaces, and manufacturing procedures, the project identifies recurring visual characteristics within industrial production, as well as formal differences between manufacturing methods.

Within the book, repetition, sequencing, scale, and material details are used to establish a rhythm of reading. Subtle variations between similar images encourage closer observation of the relationships between material conditions, production procedures, and the passage of time.

Through photography and book design, BRICK reorganises a continuous industrial process into a visual sequence that can be read, compared, and experienced through touch.

Concept and Reflection

Through industrial materials, photography, book design, handmade practices, and spatial installation, BRICK explores the relationships between material transformation, repetitive procedures, and visual structures.

The project approaches the factory as a dynamic environment composed of materials, equipment, operational processes, and spatial arrangements. It identifies and extracts distinctive visual and physical characteristics from this environment. Repetition appears not only in the regularity of manufacturing procedures but also in material arrangements, tool movements, mechanical vibrations, and continuous changes between different stages of production.

By extracting and translating these characteristics, the project establishes connections across different media. Photography records material and spatial conditions; book design communicates sequence and rhythm through visual arrangement; handmade practices investigate form and structure; and installation translates material weight, texture, and spatial relationships into direct sensory experiences.

Ultimately, BRICK investigates how a single manufacturing process can generate different forms of expression across multiple media. Through documentation, extraction, reorganisation, and reinterpretation, the project transforms the material characteristics and procedural patterns of everyday industrial production into a series of visual experiments concerning form, rhythm, structure, and physical transformation.

Copyediting:

Tao

Proof Reading:

Tao

Design:

Tao

Typeset in:

Tao

© 2025

TAO.