Bricks Reloaded

From 12 June to 1 November 2026, the exhibition Bricks Reloadedwill explore how the brick has shaped buildings, neighbourhoods and entire cities since ancient times. As a building material, a design element and a bearer of cultural significance, it has had a decisive influence on the history of architecture over thousands of years. From the monumental masonry of ancient Rome to contemporary architectural projects, the brick can be experienced as a material, a shaper of form and a bearer of historical stories. To this day, the natural raw material clay is extracted from pits, shaped and fired into bricks. At the same time, production and processing have undergone fundamental changes in the wake of industrialisation and in response to new energy and environmental requirements: the handcrafted solid brick has evolved into a wide range of modern products – right up to the highly thermally insulating large-format block.

The exhibition at the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur brings together around fifty works from the fields of architecture, design and art, which explore the material from a variety of perspectives. The focus is on the structural, design and cultural aspects of brick, its properties as a building material, and contemporary perspectives from architecture, design and art. This is complemented by new interpretations of traditional manufacturing processes. It becomes clear how a building material steeped in tradition can continually reinvent itself.

The Gewerbemuseum Winterthur also highlights local features: for instance, the brick architecture of the former Sulzer site reflects the city’s industrial history and the close link between iron and brick production since the late 19th century.

The exhibition ‘Bricks Reloaded’ was developed in collaboration with the Belgian ‘Centre d’innovation et du design au Grand Hornu’ and builds on the exhibition ‘Que veux-tu, brique?’, which took place in 2025. The expanded version in Winterthur adds examples from Swiss architecture, design and industry, and forms a focal point of the permanent exhibition ‘Material-Labor’.

To accompany the exhibition, the Winterthur Glossary is being developed as a digital reference work on the city’s brick history. The exhibition also presents research projects on new applications for bricks, including green ceramics.