Looking Closer: What Chicago’s Brick Architecture Can Teach Today’s Architects

Kelsey Munson on Oct 15, 2026

In a city known around the world for its architecture, sometimes the best way to find inspiration is simply to get outside and look a little closer.

Recently, members of the BBA Architects team stepped away from the studio for a Brick of Chicago tour through Hyde Park and Kenwood, exploring the role brick has played across generations of Chicago architecture. The tour moved among residences, schools, churches and other neighborhood landmarks, offering both a history lesson and an opportunity to examine a familiar material at a much closer scale.

And in Chicago, there may be no material more familiar than brick.

A Material Woven into Chicago's History

Brick has long been an integral part of Chicago's built environment. In the years following the Great Chicago Fire, the need for more fire-resistant construction helped make masonry an increasingly important part of the city's architecture. Over time, the material became a defining feature of neighborhoods across Chicago.

The city's distinctive residential lots also helped shape the way brick was used. A more refined brick might be reserved for a home's street-facing facade, while more economical common brick could be used along the sides and rear. Large mortar joints reduced the amount of brick required, creating a practical construction solution that eventually became part of Chicago's architectural vocabulary.

But what may simply register as "brick" to someone passing by can tell an architect a much more complicated story.

"There is so much nuance to brick," said BBA Associate Nick Moorhouse. Different manufacturing techniques produce water-struck, sand-struck, extruded and formed brick, while choices in mortar, joint depth, pattern and detailing offer architects and masons an expansive palette within what can initially seem like a straightforward material.

The Details Make the Difference

One stop on the tour offered a particularly good demonstration of just how dramatically those seemingly small choices can affect a building. At the Chabad House, the team examined a water-struck brick with a textured, almost watercolor-like appearance. But the brick itself was only part of what made the facade interesting. Changes in the depth and treatment of the mortar joints created different shadow lines across the building, emphasizing its horizontal bands and changing the way the same brick appeared from one section to another.

It's the kind of detail most people may experience without consciously recognizing it. A facade feels more horizontal. A window seems more substantial. A wall catches light differently throughout the day. For an architect, understanding what creates those effects turns brick from a simple cladding selection into a design tool.

Because unlike some other exterior materials, masonry works within a module. Brick dimensions, mortar joints, window heights and openings all have to relate to one another. Thoughtful masonry design anticipates those relationships rather than simply cutting the material wherever an opening happens to fall.

That means even a window can reveal quite a bit about the thought behind a building.

"The first thing I always look at is the detail around the windows," Nick said.

An architect might notice the material used for the sill, how the brick is supported above the opening, whether the design incorporates a jack arch or another masonry detail, and how the brick continues around it. Those details can offer clues about both the construction of the wall and the level of craftsmanship that went into it.

Learning from a Chicago Icon

The tour also included one of Hyde Park's most recognizable residences: Frank Lloyd Wright's Frederick C. Robie House. For Nick, who remembers studying the house in architecture school, seeing it in person offered another opportunity to consider how material can reinforce a much larger design idea.

The Robie House's elongated brick and horizontal joints work alongside its low rooflines, terraces, extended walls and cantilevers to reinforce the strong horizontality associated with Wright's Prairie style. Even the proportions of the individual masonry units contribute to the way the building settles into its site.

While elongated brick might be associated with a century-old architectural landmark, it hasn't remained in the past. Similar long, thin brick proportions have found renewed popularity in contemporary architecture, serving as an example of how a material can move between architectural styles while creating very different results.

Studying the Past Without Recreating It

That relationship between precedent and contemporary design is part of what makes opportunities like the Brick of Chicago tour valuable for the BBA team.

Architecture is continually informed by what came before it. Proportion, scale, material and the ways spaces are formed don't belong exclusively to either traditional or modern architecture. Studying precedent gives architects a larger vocabulary from which to work.

That's especially relevant when designing renovations and additions in Chicago's established neighborhoods. Historic districts and neighborhood guidelines can establish parameters for materials and aesthetics, but thoughtful contextual design goes beyond satisfying a requirement. It means understanding the intent and character of an existing building well enough to determine how something new should relate to it.

For Moorhouse, creating an addition that feels cohesive with an existing building can be a more challenging exercise than making the new construction intentionally different.

"Everything we do as designers and as architects is fundamentally formed by precedents," he said. The challenge is learning from those precedents without simply reproducing them — understanding the proportions, materials and design decisions behind an existing building and using that knowledge to approach it with care.

The Brick of Chicago tour offered another opportunity to build that understanding, looking closely at a material that has shaped Chicago's neighborhoods for generations and considering the many ways architects have used it to create texture, rhythm, warmth and character. Those lessons don't prescribe what the next BBA project should look like. Instead, they add to the architectural vocabulary the team can draw upon — whether the goal is to sensitively extend a historic home or find a distinctly contemporary expression for one of Chicago's most enduring building materials.