Prefabrication experiments - 145 - Future visions - 06 - Kite Bricks: an open and industrialized building block

A curious thing about the evolution of architecture and construction and wall systems in particular, even as industrialization allowed for greater component delineation, is the closed up character of architecture’s internal organs. Wiring, plumbing, insulation and systems in general are not only hidden but restricted leaving costly retrofit options requiring major demolition and reconstruction. This sealed nature can be read as the remains of archaic wet construction methods.  Modern building culture has for the most part accepted assembly of dry components as quicker, more efficient and reversible with the exception of interior finishes, which are still highly bonded by wet construction, plaster joints, and painting, all difficult to reverse or disassemble. This sealing of systems makes adapting existing building stock through renovation and retrofit a little more difficult and argues for some type of open and accessible partition system to facilitate retrofit and gain easy access to hidden components.

Kite Bricks is the invention of an Israeli start-up company with a patent-pending technology that is trying to reform building culture one «open» brick at a time with their «smart brick». The smart brick is part of an interlocking system of high strength lightweight concrete blocks bonded together not with mortar but with a polymer based cement. Each dimensionally coordinated block is cast with a void for insulation, wiring and other technical ducting. The structural system systematizes an infrastructural void, which can be easily accessed after construction. The modular blocks will be available within a series of different finishes and require little additional labour on site besides assembly. Akin to cellular block construction, Kitebrick contains one special difference: a removable face.  This forward looking system leverages the advantages of mass construction, inertia, strength, durability, thermal mass with the advantages of dry construction, rapidity, easy asembly and low onsite waste. The network of voids could potentially simplify acoustic and fire separation issues as well as all the dangerous elements are not only accessible but encased in fireproof concrete.

The system’s theoretical framework provides a vision for the future of construction where the internal mysteries of the wall are as simple as the intelligible interlocking system of a Lego block.  

Kitebrick - a patent-pending technology