SKE+CHED with Richard Wengle Architects

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My name is Richard Wengle, I'm the principal and founder of Richard Wengle Architects Inc. in Toronto - we are a residential architectural firm specializing in custom residential projects, single-family, and multi-residential projects. 

What I love about Toronto and working in it is that there's so many different facets of architectures and style and they're all isolated pockets that you can actually tell the age of the neighborhood from when the projects were built. When I’m designing, especially with brick I'm looking for authenticity - we're not trying to create a plastic replica, we're actually looking for bricks that give us the detail, the texture, the feel, the look of a handmade brick. 

The tactile expression and the enjoyment of actually holding a brick, feeling its skin, looking like it's handmade, and that's where Glen-Gery brick really comes to life for us - that there's such a huge selection of color, texture, size, and styles that it's unlimited for us and really helps us with our work - expressing true detail that we really seek out. We look for bricks that actually come with great texture, almost a tactile feeling of there's a realism to it that is not just pressed out there's edges that are alive, there's a size that represents an accuracy that we're looking for in history, as well as just even the color variation, it's not a sterile type of element, it's something that comes alive, it's something that when it's done it's not just a brick - it's a whole wall, it's a texture and it really creates a feeling and really convinces the architecture that it has a realism to it that we're seeking. 

The perfect brick for me wouldn't be perfect. It would look like it was built by hand, it'll have its warts, it'll have its inflections, it'll have some changes in its color, it doesn't have to be consistent but it's how I'll use it that'll really enhance it and use it to its advantage. So, perfection in a brick isn't what I need - I need something that just feels like it's always been there, that I've maybe reused, and it's in a convincing way that it can be a modern building with it, it can be a traditional building, but really it's almost the perfect imperfection that I'm looking for that when I see the whole wall as a single entity it's that richness and the palette that really gets me excited.