ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

Getting things wrong isn't that unusual, but winning a brick industry award when you do is. And that's exactly what happened to Baggeridge Brick with an office block in London's West End.

Architect Tryfon Kalyvides wanted 50mm-high bricks for his block at 110-116 Wigmore Street. But British brick is a martyr to metrication. The score of standard brick sizes that were common in imperial-measure Britain now come in one standard, relentless size. The British brick is now 215mm long by 65mm high, with 10mm of mortar between each course.

Importing standard 50mm-high bricks from northern Europe, where they still come in many shapes and sizes, would be vastly expensive – about six times the price of a standard brick reckons Kalyvides, who was understandably keen to find a British source.

He found it in West Midlands-based Baggeridge. The company had already worked out that the way it made paviours (which are 50mm thick) was the key to making 50mm-high bricks.

"It was a bugger to do, though," admits Baggeridge design consultant Nic White. Getting the textural finish right and working out how to stack the bricks to get the right colour (Classic Buff Multi) during firing consumed 80,000 bricks. Only 45,000 were actually used on the Wigmore Street job.

Such time-consuming experiments meant Baggeridge ran a real financial risk of delaying other production in a plant that produces a million bricks a week. The company offered to do the 50mm-high bricks for a standard price, though, because of the commercial potential. "Not everyone wants to drive a Ford Mondeo," says White. "Brick has been left behind by other materials for innovative use."

The architect was happy and so was Baggeridge. Until the first consignment was delivered. "They were all the wrong size," recalls Dave Smith, Charter Construction site manager for Wigmore Street.

In terms of innovation, brick has been left behind

Nic White, Baggeridge brick

The bricks were, in fact, 52mm high. According to White, in the world of brick, where give or take 5mm is par for the course, Baggeridge hadn't anticipated this being a problem. It was. The bricks were for cladding rather than structural support and had to rise a precise and unchangeable height between the metal channels that already ran around the outside of the building at each floor level.

White grabbed his calculator and headed off to the site with Kalyvides and the contractor to find a solution. Several hours later, they had it: taking two brick courses out of each storey was enough to compensate for the extra height while retaining the originally specified 6mm layer of mortar between the courses.

Brickwork wasn't on the critical path so there was time for Kalyvides to change the detailing without affecting the programme. Best of all, Kalyvides believes the 52mm-high brick is as good as the 50mm version he originally wanted. In fact, he likes it so much he's specified it again for the residential elements of his PFI Home Office redesign.

The Wigmore Street building won the 2002 brick industry award for best commercial building.