Of all building materials in the world, brick is one of the most enduring and ubiquitous. Traces of brickmaking date back to 7500 BC and fired brick first made its appearance in about 3500 BC. Since then, the trusty brick has shown amazing resilience and remains one of the mainstays of contemporary architecture. Rooted in tradition in countries as different as China and the Netherlands, it is inexpensive, flexible in use, and can also be ecologically fabricated.

This comprehensive volume tours the world to cover the most exciting and innovative brick buildings of the past 35 years, from Paraguay to New Zealand. True to all TASCHEN architecture tomes, it includes new talents like Sanchit Arora from RENESA as well as established starchitects such as Renzo Piano and Peter Zumthor. Featured buildings showcase the variety of brick applications across cultural, domestic, infrastructure, and leisure spaces, including Tate Modern Switch House in London by Herzog & de Meuron, D’Houndt + Bajart’s Boa School Restaurant in Lille-Lomme, and MASS Design’s Maternity Waiting Village in Kasungu, Malawi.

“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.” * Ludwig Mies van der Rohe *

Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard and edited Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His TASCHEN books include the Homes for Our Time series and monographs on numerous major architects, including Norman Foster, Tadao Ando, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, and Zaha Hadid.