The Heights (Wilson Secondary School): Corium Brick

This award-winning contemporary school includes several unique exterior features. Wrapping the floating bars in heavy, traditional brickwork was nearly impossible — but not for Corium Brick.

The new Wilson Secondary School expands and combines two secondary programs to a new building on Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA. Designed by BIG Architects and Leo A Daly, “the design seeks to maintain the feeling of a 1-story school building while still having a vertical organization and the efficiencies afforded by it.” The building is designed as a series of bars rotated about a single hinge point. The structures rotation naturally creates large soffits and usable green space atop each bar. Wrapping these floating bars in heavy brickwork would typically prove challenging, but not for Corium Brick.

Design Challenges

The primary façade challenge was accommodating building movement across long, narrow bands of brick installed over glass curtain wall systems and large triangular soffits. Traditional brick veneer assemblies would have required frequent expansion joints, interrupting the desired continuity of the façade.

The design team sought a thin brick solution that could maintain the visual weight and character of masonry while allowing for precise detailing across complex geometries and transitions.

Solution

Telling’s Thin Brick Rainscreen system provided a lightweight, fully engineered alternative to conventional brick veneer, enabling brick to be used across cantilevered volumes, soffits, and curtain wall conditions with a consistent architectural expression.

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Using the Corium Brick system as the underlying technology, custom zipper joints were incorporated to accommodate building movement while preserving the appearance of continuous brick surfaces. The rear-ventilated rainscreen assembly allowed thin brick to be installed over deep face-of-wall offsets and skewed intersections with consistent alignment and finish quality.