Nikos Kolintzas of Lydia Roda presented Flexbrick, a system that takes the centuries-old Catalan vault and turns it into a prefabricated “ceramic fabric,” a flexible second skin of terracotta hung on a steel mesh.
The inspiration is old. The Catalan vault, Bóveda Catalana, is a traditional technique in which layered flat bricks form self-supporting arches without heavy formwork, an elegant marriage of engineering and craft. Flexbrick starts from a simple question about it: instead of laying bricks one by one, what if a large, prefabricated sheet could be lifted into place and installed efficiently?
The answer Kolintzas described is best understood as a ceramic fabric, terracotta hung almost like a textile. The modules arrive prefabricated and are lifted by crane, fixed at the top where the main support sits, quickly and with limited disruption on site; that alone cuts labour, cost and time.
Underneath the effect is a piece of hardware. The system is a stainless-steel (316) mesh into which pieces of terracotta, or other materials, are inserted. It is supported from the top, while vertical wind rails, fixed slot to slot, carry the panel and resist wind loads, with the mesh clamped onto them. Modules run around 130 cm and up to roughly 25 m long, which is where the flexibility comes from, the same system wrapping façades, roofs and pavements.
The pitch, then, is a lightweight, sustainable second skin: flexible ceramic that shapes architectural identity while improving how the building performs, shown through projects including Hotel Sant Antoni in Barcelona, where the Catalan vault’s logic is carried into a contemporary envelope.