Brick

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A brick is a block of ceramic used to construct. Bricks are used to construct buildings and pavement. It is made of concrete, clay or adobe. There are some bricks resistant to fire (it is used to contruct fireplaces and ovens. Bricks are used in buildings or pavement, but mostly are used to build walls or partitions.

There are different types of bricks. Here the clasification:

- Massifis: they are flat and one surface has a lower level than the others (face sunken). That lower level is use to connect bricks to each other, when filled with gripping material (cement) - Special: it has different forms to decore finished walls. There are some designs ending in curves, corners and angles with rounded tip. Mostly, the special bricks are the most beautiful bricks. - Holes: represent a real wall against moisture. They are lightweight and have multiple roles in construction, such as lifting the double walls between which we need to incorporate barriers or insulation materials.

Bricklaying is a trade specialized in constructing buildings and repairing walls, floors, partitions, fireplaces, chimneys and more. Some bricklayers learns to construct just watching another person doing that, but nowadays exists professional Bracklaying Techniques. It's like the professional stugy of the Bricklayers and is extrmally usefull is they want to do a better job. The bricklaying techniques were created to optimize the result of the Bricklaying's construction.

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**Bricklaying Techniques:** __//**Stretcher Bond**// __//:// it is the easiest bond to lay and minimises the amount og cutting required. It can be used for single skin walls quite easily. The two stretcher skinks are locked together across the collar joint by means of wall ties.

__**//The English Bond//** __**//://** itis the traditional bond and it dates back hundreds of years and features alternating the courses of the stretchers and the headers. This is one of the strongest brickwork bond patterns.

Theres no exists advantages or disavantages between this two bracklaying techniques because they're just a design. The difference between them is that using The English Bond, you can create easier a bold wall.

Centro San Ignacio is placed in Caracas, Venezuela. It is a mall to shop, share in family, with friends and more. It is has different kinds of shops for everyone. It is constructed with brick. All the front is decorated with polished bricks, all lined between them and the context is decorated with palms. The interior of the mall is still decorated with bricks. Green and beautiful plants in combination with the orange bricks creates a beautiful design. The floor are 120,000 mts of construction, with beautiful Italian granite finishes. The design of this mall won an international award for Latin American Architecture Mies Van Der Rohe in 1998.
 * CENTRO SAN IGNACIO **

**What construction material would you use to build your own house?** I would use brick to build my own house because it is a resistent material that can be use to construct and to decorate. I would decorate all the exterior of the house with bricks using different bricklaying tecnhiques.



POST-READING ACTIVITIES Find out the meaning of the expressions below
 * Brick upon brick: is the activity to construct and decore using bricks alined one up another.
 * Brick & mortar: is a traditional "street-side" business that deals with its customers face to face in an office or store that the business owns or rents. Web-based businesses usually have lower costs and greater flexibility than brick-and-mortar operations.
 * Come up against a brick wall: it refers to go against the current.
 * Come down on somebody like a ton of bricks: it refers to the people that depends one of the another and when one of them fails, the others come down lke a ton of bricks (brick supports one another in construction).