Hello!

My name is Will. I’m an architecture historian, photographer, and fan of bricks.

Why? Brick is everywhere - especially in Chicago.

It's everywhere, but it's never the same. It's so full of detail, pattern, color, and nuance. It's laid very intentionally, it wears down in varied and beautiful ways. There are so many different kinds of brick, so many colors of brick, and so many ways of building with brick. 

Back in 2016 I was working as a teaching artist, speeding all over the city teaching in one neighborhood in the morning, another in the afternoon, and a third in the evening. As I traveled, I noticed that Chicago is full of the same building types—bungalows, twoflats, courtyards—over and over again; but no two neighbors look alike, thanks to their brick. And I noticed that the bricks weren’t just red, there was so much more to them.

I decided to document the brick as a way to pay more attention to the world around me and encourage others to do the same. As people asked questions I started researching, and suddenly it felt like I was able speak a foreign language that had been hiding in plain sight. And it made my life and experience of the city so much more interesting.

Everything built (physical things like buildings or non-physical things like systems or societies) is designed and has impact, good or bad. It’s easy to walk by something like a brick building and pay it no mind. But the world is so much more interesting when you ask the question “what is that and why is it the way it is?”.

So join me! Let’s see what the city is made of.

I lead tours about bricks and architecture! You can learn more here. I’ve had several media appearances, which you can check out here

This project was also inspired by Alexandra Horowitz's incredible book On Looking. I can’t recommend it highly enough.