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It’s all about the details in this home – the architectural touches, the finishes, even the mortar. With the Morada Splits providing the monochromatic and dramatic base for the design, every element was carefully considered and finished to a high quality.
Designed and built by Hocking Constructions, the team worked extra hard to ensure that the Morada Split bricks were displayed to their best advantage, assisted by the PGH team who offered technical advice throughout the build.
Paul Hocking says that Hocking Constructions is a small family business, founded by Paul’s grandfather about 40 years ago. He currently works with his father, Rob, who is planning to retire soon, when the business will pass to Paul.
While Hocking Constructions works with PGH Bricks on many projects, this was the first time they worked with the Morada bricks. They said the bricks were the perfect choice for the aesthetic the homeowners wanted.
“The homeowners wanted a masculine/ industrial feel, but still soft at the same time.”
He says that the slimline design of the Morada Splits enabled the design to be realised in an elegant way. “A lot of the design revolved around the bricks with the black and the white combination, with the black being a bit more masculine and the white bringing that softer element,” he says.
“It was a family home, but they wanted an inner courtyard where you wouldn't really know you were in the inner city, and I think they did really well.”
Choosing the Nero and Blanco bricks provided just the right contrast for the facade, says Paul, with the slim lines echoing the contemporary design.
“The Morada is a beautiful brick,” he says, adding that the mortar colours were chosen to complement the elegant lines of the black and white bricks chosen.
“We had the white mortar with the white brick, and then the black mortar with the black brick, and making sure the black oxide in the black mortar stayed off the white bricks was very important because we didn't want to stain them.”
The elegant and understated design of the house is a testament to the bricks, which was a significant part of the build. Hocking engaged local specialist bricklayers, Powell Bricklaying, waiting for many months before they were available to start the project. The actual bricklaying itself took about four months to complete.
And while the design and shape of the bricks added complexity to the build, it also made the final product more memorable as it made the team find elegant design solutions to accommodate the longer, leaner look of the bricks. The visual impact was an added bonus.
“Being the splits, they're long and narrow – it’s quite a long profile,” Paul says. “We had some curves we had to deal with, including a round window and some curvy elements to soften the facade. So we ended installing a lot of the bricks on edge in some locations to manage those radiuses, which added a really nice effect.”
Staging the job was also critical. “It was a two-storey build with a ground floor and then a suspended concrete slab,” he says. “We did the structural brickwork on the lower floor and then after the structural brickwork went in, we completed the suspended slab. Then, after the suspended slab went in, we came back and did all the upper-level face brickwork and then dropped our scaffold.
“So we did it a little bit backwards in a way. Rather than building from the ground up, we had to do it in the opposite sequence.”
The European lines and styling of the Morada impressed them and they have already started work on their next project using the same bricks.
“It was a bit of a challenging project because of the location,” Paul says, explaining that the home was in Adelaide’s inner-city and had limited access.
He also appreciated the support given by the local PGH Bricks team, especially because deliveries had to be carefully timed.
“We had to close the road to crane the bricks in,” explains Paul. “We organised with the PGH team to bring the trucks in early in the morning, sit them in the laneway, close the laneway, get this huge crane, lift the bricks over another building and into our site.”
“So it was a big process, in every way, even the logistics.”
Using bricks to clad the building has meant that the finished home is quite low in maintenance, which Paul said really appealed to the homeowners.
The Morada Range, imported from Europe, boasts the highest end of luxury with the smoothest finishes in solid, colour-through brick products.
Ideally placed to complement contemporary designs and slimline profiles, the bricks are available in Standard size, Splits and in a slender Linear. Often specified by architects, this collection epitomises a stunning architectural selection for achieving European style and elegance.
