Making it simple

Built about 4500 years ago, using over two million stone blocks, creating a structure that

The Great Pyramid of Giza

was equivalent to the height of a forty-five storey building, the Great Pyramid is a remarkable example of a complex architectural monument created using simple unskilled labour and the most rudimentary of tools - copper chisels and blades, wooden mallets and fibre or leather ropes.

While exactly how this was executed remains a subject of debate still, there is some consensus that the resourceful engineers building the pyramids broke down the construction into stages and a system of ramps were used to haul the stones from stage to stage, albeit with anywhere from twenty to thirty thousand workers on site for several years.

Computer rendering of brick screen wall in central staircase area

I was reminded of this trip, when we started work on the design of the screen staircase wall of our home. Our plan was to build it using wire cut bricks. The bricks would be laid on top of each other to form the wall. In order to have it be a screen (i.e not a solid wall) every other row would have the bricks be laid at right angles to the row below with an open space between adjoining bricks.

A side view

By having these spaced out bricks be of different lengths, one could achieve a three dimensional effect in addition to the desired screen pattern. Our design team came up with a number of screen options - the image above shows the DNA helix pattern I selected. The next image shows a portion of the screen wall from the side. One can see how varying the length of the protruding section of the brick creates the helix pattern. While I liked this concept, I felt executing this computer generated 'varying length' brick pattern in the field would be an interesting execution exercise.

Now the task at hand was to break down the design into a simple repeatable pattern using standard sized bricks. Firstly, in order to have the variation in length we had bricks protruding 2,3,4 & 5 inches i.e bricks of four different lengths. The helix pattern repeated with every 14 alternate rows. The masons were provided a color coded chart, a section of which looked like the image below:

The color of the brick indicate what type of brick to use (red- protruding 5 inches, yellow 4, green 3, and blue 2 inches). Starting from the bottom, the pattern repeats after every 14 courses (rows).

I was impressed by how helpful this chart was to assist in comprehension. With this understood, execution began. First the bricks were cut into the four desired lengths. This required the bricks to be soaked for a few hours to make them easier to cut accurately. This was time consuming. Then they started the process of laying each course of bricks. This required to be done with care since they had to maintain a precise gap between the screening bricks - this was achieved by having pre-cut 'spacers' used to ensure that the gaps between bricks were identical. The brick laying had to be done slowly since each rise (a group of 6-8 rows of bricks) had to set and be cured before the higher courses were laid. By the time the entire wall was up, four weeks had elapsed, however the result was striking.

While our screen wall has been a much simpler and quicker structure to build compared to the Great Pyramid, it was interesting to see how architects seemed to use similar principles of simplification and repititon in order to execute complex tasks using less skilled workers.

...The 'Thinker' rock

...Bullish about rebar