Masonry Design and Detailing

Masonry Design and Detailing Book By Christine Beall

Brick is the oldest manufactured building material, invented almost

10,000 years ago. Its simplicity, strength, and durability led to extensive use,

and gave it a dominant place in history alongside stone.

Rubble stone and mud bricks, as small, easily handled materials, could

be stacked and shaped to form enclosures of simple or complex design. Handshaped,

sun-dried bricks, reinforced with such diverse materials as straw

and dung, were so effective that kiln-fired bricks did not appear until the

third millennium B.C., long after the art of pottery had demonstrated the

effects of high temperatures on clay.