Wet perforated bricks

Durability of brick buildings as exemplified by the traditional village of Dangjia in the central Shaanxi plain (China)

 

Prof. Zhan Xuanye, Senior Engineer, Xi'an Research and Development Institute of wall and roof materials, Xi’an (China), Dr. Michel Kornmann, technical consultant, Geneva (Switzerland)

 

To be published in Ziegel International November 2011

 

The paper demonstrates the excellent durability and service life of constructions built with bricks and roof tiles in traditional dwellings of the central Shaanxi plain in China, taking the village of Dangjia as an example.

It introduces briefly the historical development and the layout of the village, the climatic conditions, and the structural characteristics of the courtyard dwellings “Siheyuan”. It describes the bricks and roof tiles, which were used as well as the various brick carvings. It explains briefly the technological principle of reducing firing and gives examples of recycling of old bricks and roof tiles.

In this small and simple peasant village, far from rich cities, with a relatively severe climate, more than 100 courtyard dwellings, aged between 200 and 600 years, are still in use. They exhibit very nice and delicate carvings that remain in good conditions.

Therefore, the excellent durability of ancient bricks and roof tiles as well as constructions should be recognized. To reach such a long service life, the layout, the design, the selection of building materials and the culture of constructions are the key factors. Such long duration buildings are definitely environment friendly.

The new environmental calculations requested by standards should take more into consideration the practical operation lives of the buildings. They can be much longer than proposed in the standards.