Today I ventured out in the wind and rain to nail a piece of metal roofing to my garage! strange I know but this particular piece was a sample of terne coated stainless steel which will weather down to a matt grey tone.
As Architects we are not only interested in the form of the buildings we design but also the materials from which they are built. Part of this is testing what a material may look like after it has been 'in the wild' for a while. Although the stainless steel is bright (think toaster) today within six months it will have darkened and its lustre will have faded.
All too often we are fooled by glossy images of buildings and fail to realise that the eventual appearance may be different. Housing estates (sorry, executive developments) are fond of clean white render which hides the many sins of poor quality blockwork. These shiny white blocks look great in the short term (usually while the sales shack remains on site) but quickly start to show their pain by revealing poorly designed cills, flashings and copes. The buildings bleed a dirty stain from strangely positioned boiler overflows and develop bags under their eyes due to rain shadows at eaves and projecting cills.
As consumers we should think a little harder about what we buy from developers, swishy kitchens and an LCD tv thrown in seems to be all that matters, who cares that the outside is ugly or failing or ill-fitting?
I wouldn't buy a suit with a loose button, why then are we so poor at judging the quality of houses?
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