Peter Belsey uses pale bricks and thick mortar to create monolithic facade of Brisbane's Couldrey House

Mortar oozes between the off-white bricks that clad this house in Brisbane, which architect Peter Belsey has designed to look "immensely heavy".

Couldrey House measures 320 square metres and is situated west of central Brisbane, nestled in the foothills of Mount Coot-tha.

Besley wanted the house's heavy materiality to contrast vernacular residential architecture in Australia, which he thinks is too-often built with lightweight materials that constantly need to be repaired.

It's also meant to stylistically echo structures that Besley saw in Iraq, where he worked for a number of months.

"Buildings there seem aware of the scale and solemnity of the land in which they sit," said Besley, "the forms and spaces are compelling but simple – they sit heavily on the ground."

"Through them, I have become particularly aware of the deeper, haunting quality of ancient landscapes of which Australia is one," he continued. "The architecture of [the house] is designed to allow visual noise to fall away to heighten awareness of these qualities."

Slim, off-white bricks completely cover the house's south and west-facing facades.

They've been joined together using a "mortar snot" technique – where excess mortar that pushes through the gaps between bricks is allowed to set and dry, rather than being scraped off.

It leaves behind a bumpy, uneven surface texture that Besley hoped would juxtapose the uniformity of the bricks. The way in which the thick mortar bulges out from the facade creates shadow-play throughout the day.

"Together, the textural effect is striking, and starts to form aesthetic allegiances with landscape features – people have likened the brick elevations to tree bark, for example, or sedimentary rock," explained Besley. "Children prefer to see it as a cake with icing."

Concentric rectangles frame the home's front door to form what the architect describes as a "concertina" effect.

Directly in front is a wide flight of steps, crafted from perforated bricks that will be able to drain away rainwater when necessary.

Apart from a couple of louvred openings that have been punctuated in the south side of the house, the rest of the brick facade is windowless to stop passersby peeking in.

Large windows feature on the north and east-facing facades, which can be slid back to let in fresh air and cooling breezes during the summer months.

These purposefully weren't replaced with full-height panels of glazing – Besley wanted inhabitants' sightlines directed away from the street and towards the greenery outdoors, fostering the feeling of "living high up amongst a tree canopy".

Inside, communal living spaces have been arranged across the first floor, while sleeping quarters are down at ground level.

Rooms have been finished in a pared-back aesthetic that Besley felt complemented the home's "sober" exterior – concrete floors run throughout and a majority of surfaces, including the storage units, are plain white.

Elements like the door frames, staircase handle and breakfast island in the kitchen are crafted from warm-hued timber. Bricks that were about to be cast away in a rubbish skip were also saved and used to create a backing for the fireplace.

"The overall effect of the envelope is sober, and somewhat other-worldly; the masonry was important so the building's character develops and becomes more nuanced as it weathers and ages, and does not require continual replacement in order to look new," concluded Besley.

"The building should get better, not worse, with time."

Besley previously headed-up architecture practice Assemblage but now runs his own self-titled studio, working between offices in London and Brisbane.

Bricks are a popular material of choice for architects looking to create statement facades. Khuôn Studio fronted a house in Vietnam with perforated grey bricks, providing shade to its internal atrium, while Stanton Williams used an array of cream-coloured bricks to create a "textured protective shell" around a London home.

Photography is by Rory Gardiner.

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Project credits:

Architecture and design: Peter Besley
Thanks to: Jessica Spresser, Max Blake, Andrew Furzeland, Assemblage
Structural engineer: Projex Partners
Builder: TM Residential Projects

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Everyone in the creative industries is "wondering what our role is" says Beatrice Galilee

Beatrice Galilee has curated an online design symposium for Virtual Design Festival, which will be broadcast from 1:00pm UK time later today. In this video message, she questions the role of the creative industries during the coronavirus pandemic.

Galilee is a co-founder and curator of The World Around, an architecture and design conference, which had its first edition in January 2020 in New York.

Galilee has curated a series of interviews with architects and visionaries working on environmental issues around the world in a symposium for Earth Day, which will be broadcast live on Dezeen from 1:00pm today as part of a collaboration between Virtual Design Festival and The World Around.

"Like everybody working in the creative industries now, I'm wondering what to say and what our role is and what we can learn from these extremely complicated times that we're all sharing together," Galilee said in the video.

"Those are some of the questions I'm asking the best people I know in the design industries on 22 April here on Dezeen, when The World Around is going to take over the website for Earth Day."

Tribute to essential workers

Speaking from her home in Brooklyn, New York, Galilee also paid tribute to the essential workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in her video message.

"I'm extremely lucky and grateful to be safe and comfortable in quarantine, and very aware that's not the case for everybody, and so thankful to everybody who's on the frontlines at the moment, keeping us all safe and fed and healthy," she said.

Galilee's video message features in Dezeen's launch movie for Virtual Design Festival, along with video messages from 34 other architects, designers and artists in lockdown around the world, including Stefano Giovanni, Es Devlin, Ini Archibong, Ben van Berkel and Bec Brittain. You can watch the full movie here.

Galilee is a writer, curator and former curator for architecture and design at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where she organised its architecture symposium A Year of Architecture in a Day

Send us a video message

Dezeen invited architects, designers, artists and industry figures to record video messages from lockdown and made a montage of 35 video messages to launch Virtual Design Festival.

We'll be posting an individual video message each day. Check them out here. To submit your own message, see the brief here.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020. It intends to bring the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

We will host a rolling programme of online talks, lectures, movies, product launches and more. It will complement and support fairs and festivals around the world that have had to be postponed or cancelled and it will provide a platform for design businesses, so they can, in turn, support their supply chains.

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Vivviane Westwood and Christopher Kane create hopeful coronavirus posters

Artists and designers including Vivienne Westwood, Christopher Kane and Wolfgang Tillmans have created protest-style posters about coronavirus for Dazed Media.

As part of its #AloneTogether campaign, Dazed Media asked creatives to design posters that respond to the changes brought about by the pandemic and call for a better future. Graffiti artist 3D, fashion designer Katharine Hamnett and director Margot Bowman have also contributed poster designs.

Photographer and director Jonas Lindstroem's poster puts dreams on a front page

"Part warning, hope and inspiration, these posters are beacons for future action and connection," said Dazed Media co-founder Jefferson Hack.

"There is a long history of political protest and creative resistance being expressed through poster design, illustration and graphic art," he added.

"Whether they are posters intended for the street or for the screen this inspiring collection gives voice to artists' social, political and personal reflections."

Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood calls for less consumerism

Westwood, who has previously called to ban land ownership and protested climate change at her catwalk shows, also designed a poster for the #AloneTogether campaign.

Executed in her signature punk style, the slogan "Buy less, chose it well, make it last" is splashed in acid-yellow block letters on a hot pink background.

Graffiti artist 3D used simple symbols for his poster

Fashion designer Kane put the words "Be open to the joy you deserve" in a white sans serif font on a black background.

3D, also known as Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja, made a poster with no words, just a universal symbol for a hand with a plus sign on the palm.

Wolfgang Tillmans encourages people to buy newspapers and magazines

Photographer Tillmans' poster features a collage of photos of printing presses with the words "to keep the free press free pay for it" scrawled across it. Tillmans recently created a special edition memorial cover for the Evening Standard magazine and an anti-Brexit poster.

Fashion designer Hamnett, who is well known for her political slogan T-shirts, made a simple black-and-white poster that says simply: "Save our future".

Margot Bowman's nudes sit alone but together in isolation

An illustration by Bowman depicts four nude figures, interlocking yet isolated, looking into their mobile phones. The ambiguous image could be one of online connection or loneliness in lockdown.

Artist and model Lotte Anderson took a self portrait with a devil's fork and a teddy for her poster, surrounding herself with abstract slogans calling for a rent strike and listing lockdown essentials such as weed, Juul Pods and chocolate.

Kris Andrew Small created a colourful poster for #AloneTogether

Illustrator and designer Kris Andrew Small's poster says "Get out from the inside" in the artist's signature collage of dynamic type against technicolour backgrounds.

Artist and writer Wilson Oryema repeated the phrase "Ladies and gentleman, we are floating in space", the title of a 1997 psychedelic rock album, in white and black letters on a tomato-red backdrop

What emotional state has the pandemic left us in, asks Charles Jeffery

Fashion designer Charles Jeffery asks "How does it make you feel?" over a screaming, grinning face wearing dramatic makeup reflected in a broken mirror.

Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion produced a poster with a large letter A that is weeping over a dead butterfly. Illustrator Polly Nor drew a figure in bed hugging a tree next to a quote by Yrsa Daley-Ward.

Peter Kennard's anti-war artwork has been revamped for the current crisis

Pictures of the Earth from space are a recurring theme. Photographer and director Jonas Linstroem put the world on a mockup of a newspaper front page, and sculptor William Farr created an Earth from flowers.

Political artist Peter Kennard and anarchist artist Jamie Reid reworked Kennard's piece Disarm Now! depicting nuclear weapons being broken in half to include the words "Afterwards the rumour is another world is possible".

Flower sculptor William Farr produced a vision of a new Eden

Several of the artists who took part in the #AloneTogether campaign have also donated signed artworks to a charity auction being held to raise money for Barts Health NHS Trust.

Many major magazines have put coronavirus on the front cover to mark the crisis, and last month graphic designers created a series of illustrations to help share helpful advice during the pandemic.

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BIG creates spiral museum for Audemars Piguet in the Swiss mountains

Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet is a spiral-shaped building rising up out of the landscape of Vallée de Joux in Switzerland designed by BIG for the watchmaker to house its collection of timepieces.

The curved glass walls and the green roof of the BIG-designed pavilion sit next to the original Audemars Piguet workshop, which was set up in 1875.

This historic building has been restored by Swiss architecture office CCHE and connected to the new museum, which was also realised by the studio.

BIG designed the museum's curved glass walls to be load-bearing, so there are no columns or walls with the building. Bronze mesh sits over the top of the glazed facade to filter sunlight without obstructing views of the Jura mountains.

The spiral roof's shape forms clerestory windows towards the centre that are also shaded with bronze. Grass covers the roof of the building to create a lawn in summer and a snowy scene in winter.

Inside, the curved glass walls converge in a clockwise direction to channel visitors through the building as though they are walking inside the spring of a watch.

The floors are slanted to follow the gradient of the ground, rising and falling as it leads from the entrance to the centre.

German architecture studio Atelier Brückner designed the museum's exhibition spaces, which showcase 300 watches from the brand's collection.

At the centre of the spiral sits the Universelle – Audemars Piguet's most complicated watch, which was made in 1899. Other astronomical watches are arranged around this centre like planets in a solar system.

Each watch is displayed in a metal case shaped like an astronomical instrument perched on a slim column anchored to the ground.

Displays also include sculptures and moving models that demonstrate the inner workings of the watches. Benches have been set up as interactive displays for visitors who want to try their hand at watchmaking skills.

Two ateliers sit within the museum's coils, where visitors can watch the watchmakers at work. In the Grandes Complications workshop, a single watch is painstakingly assembled from 648 pieces over the course of eight months.

In the second workshop, the Métiers d'Art, jewellers and gem-setters work on the Haute Joaillerie collections.

The museum was set to open in summer 2020, but this date has been pushed back due to coronavirus.

Founded in 2005 by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, BIG has recently completed a twisting white-brick and glass school in the USA, and a power plant in Denmark with a ski slope on the roof.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.

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Arcadio and Javier Marín design Mexican art gallery to be an "inhabitable sculpture"

Monolithic concrete colonnades wrap around a pool in this studio and gallery that Mexican architect Arcadio Marín has designed for his sculptor brother Javier.

Called Plantel Matilde, the project forms part of the Javier Marín Foundation, a non-profit art association founded by the Mexican sculptor. Along with Javier Marín's studio and gallery, it also hosts studios and accommodation for resident artists.

The Marín brothers completed the facility on a former agave field in Mexico's Yucatan jungle. Its architecture is intended to take influences from Javier's sculptural works, which aim to explore the creative process and construction and deconstruction of three-dimensional forms.

"In total harmony with principles at the heart of his artistic production – a penchant for the unpredictable, imperfections and work in progress – this is a building waiting for the environment to leave its mark on it," said the Javier Marín Foundation.

"All this aesthetic turns the building into an inhabitable sculpture in constant mutation."

Chunky concrete columns run along two walls around the square-plan open exhibition space, while the other two walls have narrow windows. A lower level, concealed from view, houses the resident artist's bedrooms.

The walls of windows and open corridors offer 360-degree views of the surrounding landscape, treetops and sky during the day and night.

"Plantel Matilde was thought of as an observatory, a place beneath the treetops to observe the celestial vault in its entirety and the phenomena that occur in it throughout the day," the foundation added.

In the centre, a pool filled with tiny plants and stone paths that cut across leading to a gravel patio occupied by a large tree. Water from the pool flows beneath the ground level and fills a waterway that wraps around its perimeter.

Pre-hispanic details like covered walkways and patio spaces take cues from church cloisters and traditional hacienda courtyards.

Marín's abstract sculptural works, which made from cast bronze and fronted with human faces, are positioned along the open arcades.

Inside the closed corridors are several decorative tables and artist work stools. A group of large chandeliers formed by varying-sized circles and tiny candles hang from the ceiling.

Narrow windows that extend the length of the hallway are covered with two sets of wooden shutters.

Plantel Matilde is built with materials and finishes that are intended to require little upkeep and have minimal environmental impact. For example, small bedroom windows are placed at the same level as the waterway to bring cool air into the structure.

Plantel Matilde plans to open its artist residency program in 2021.

Other artist studios and galleries in Mexico include a bunker-like concrete structure Mexican sculptor Pedro Reyes designed for himself and La Tallera, a gallery renovated by architect Frida Escobedo.

Photography is by Edmund Sumner.

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