Glass bricks glisten. From afar, they might look like lime Jell-O, something you could poke with a finger and see wobble, or like a chunk of ice that could melt in the sun. But like their clay relatives, the bricks are solid, something that designers can specify for projects looking to bring daylight into a space while maintaining a bit of privacy.
While precursors to glassy bricks were popular in the mid-20th century — with designers integrating textured glass blocks from companies like Seves into bathrooms and breezeways — the option fell out of popularity in the ensuing decades. But, as interest in masonry facades makes a comeback, glass bricks are popping up in more projects, including residential work.
In response to that shifting demand, Pennsylvania-headquartered brick manufacturer Glen-Gery launched its line of “Venetian Glass Bricks” as part of its premium product offerings in clear and four colors — light blue, dark blue, amber, and a smokey quartz — available in shiny, polished, and matte finishes. This week, the company expanded its line with just one more color: emerald green.
The additional color was launched to “play off the designer’s focus on nature,” said Tim Leese, Glen-Gery’s director of marketing. Echoing tones found in leaves and moss, the green “evok[es] feelings of freshness and tranquility and just tying the outdoors with the indoors.”
Glen-Gery has “a lot of conversations with architects and designers about biophilic design and sustainability,” Leese said. “So, knowing where architects and designers are at in terms of thinking about the green, and the natural elements certainly played into our decision.”
Glass bricks in action
While the emerald green option is still fresh off the molds, designers have been incorporating the company’s glass bricks into residential products since their launch earlier in the decade.
StudioSC, an architecture firm based in Brooklyn, New York, incorporated amber-colored glass bricks into the exterior of a private residential project in Greenpoint. Faced with a project that would see a significant amount of street-level foot traffic, the firm wanted an option that would allow lighting into the main entrance foyer without creating a fishbowl effect that puts everything inside on display.
“We wanted to create something that would both bring light inward during the day but still give a sense of privacy and also create a soft glow at night,” said Studio SC principal Stephen Conte. “At the same time, the whole building is built from brick, and we didn’t want to just put a window there.”
Instead, the firm wanted something that spoke more to the building’s materiality and masonry texture found in other residences in the neighborhood, Conte said. The glass brick, he explained, offers “a transition of materials, but at the same time it’s using the same material.”
The firm used a modest rectangle of roughly 300 glass bricks in the project, which is the small-scale usage Leese would expect.
“It’s rather expensive from a price point standpoint,” he noted, “so it’s not always the largest applications.
"I feel like designers are trying to be more unique, and you know, more like quality over quantity.”