Planter Bricks

This one seems so obvious to us now after seeing it, but originality always comes from those who are the first to invent something. This time it's a special brick used to hold vegetation, and you can see various styles in the image above.

The bricks were designed by San Fratello Architects, who explain:

The planter brick wall is designed to be a combination of traditional masonry units combined with units that can hold plants and vegetation. Most plants do not need much, if any, soil but they do need water and nutrients.

This unique approach enables a wide variety of plants to be accommodated within structures, especially those with low water and nutrient requirements.

As for the manufacturing process, it's a hybrid of 21st Century and Prehistoric:

The planter bricks are 3D printed using direct digital manufacturing . The bricks are modeled in a 3D software application and the digital file is sent directly to the 3D printer for  manufacture. This means a very diverse and infinitely unique selection of bricks can be manufactured based on the clients or designers desires for a particular application. The bricks are manufactured with clay instead of more ephemeral powders that are typically used for rapid prototyping . The 3d clay prints are then bisque fired at cone 5 and glazed to make them waterproof.

What other variants of bricks could be contemplated?

Via Rael San Fratello Architects