Architects about facades

The classic look of the house is relevant at all times, no matter how modern houses with flat roofs try to take the lead. Today I will take apart a recent French château-inspired project I worked on and talk about the techniques I used during the design of the façade.

The first thing to look for is symmetry, one of the main characteristics of a classical heritage. The expressive central risalite with a wide staircase of the main entrance, framed with balusters, immediately sets a solemn tone.

The decor is simultaneously plentiful, but it does not sting the eye, thanks to the fact that it is in a single pastel palette, the contrast of the transition is smoothed as much as possible.

By decor I mean not only window frames or pilasters. The first floor is completely rusticated, and above the openings there are arcs of rustication and volumetric elements, like keystones.

At the corners of the second floor are corner bosses, in support of the first floor rustication.

Going up, I added framing to the dormer windows with semi-circular tympanas, balancing the large number of corners, and graceful brackets on the pilasters.

But since everything is basically the same color, you need different materials to make the façade not look boring.

The ground floor, which is more visible and interacts more with people, is more expensive with natural stone; the second floor is separated by a belt and plastered, and the risalita above the entrance portal is tiled.

The house, by Indian Architects, which I particularly liked. How well they managed to combine modern architecture and pleasing patterns! Two years ago I wrote a post about an ethno-trend that seems to be emerging. This house is a fitting illustration.

A lot of vernacular humanized design has been lost and replaced by a unified international approach, where any pattern or pleasing excess is perceived as a crime against the idea of rationality. And of course this approach excluded "old," "naïve" art as a relic, and ethnic design seemed to threaten the globalist project.

I'm all for finding a balance. You don't have to throw the baby out with the water. Corbusier is good, but this radical lacks softness. A house is not only a machine for living, but also a place of aesthetic experience. The house should be pleasant for the child and the old lady, not just the man in the suit. A home should remind us who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.

It's interesting to be in good-quality "historic" buildings. When you get from the context of the decades in which my Soviet rational house is built into the context of the centuries, it's a different scale, a different perspective.

Ethnic style speaks to me on an even more general level - the level of millennia of human history. That's why it's so interesting to be in Indonesian villages. Traditional arts and crafts are alive there while building modern homes to please tourists. This unification gives birth to surprisingly comfortable and beautiful spaces.

Native patterns, carvings, weaving, give such nice filler.

Here are some details in the arch review on this house: archi.capital/howto/144

The choice of tones for the façade design depends on the customer's taste preferences. Both can look equally interesting and stylish.

In this project, for example, the range of tones is quite large, but all four variants look bright and complete and absolutely appropriate.

The light shades look fresh, open and welcoming.

But you have to remember that a darker color will heat up more in the sun, which means the temperature inside will also rise in hot weather.

Also, saturated colors are more susceptible to fading.

Another important nuance - shades, even if in the project, sketch, visualization you are in full delight with the chosen color, in reality the selected color will be a little different, so you need to do test painting materials.

An interesting house, at the intersection of country and half-timbered styles.

One unusual detail is the color of the thermal wood beams on top of the façade.

In the traditional version of half-timbered houses they are usually dark.

In this project I chose white, which brings lightness and refreshes the façade.

By using decorative beams and alternating two colors of plaster in the decoration of the second floor, the asymmetric windows on the main gable were masked, and their complete absence on the side façade. And the use of diagonal fragments allowed us to combine the carport with the overall image of the house.

Recently we wrote a post about glass bricks and glass blocks and how they are experiencing a new round of popularity, including their use in exterior finishes.

Here's another impressive example of their use on the facade.

A restaurant called Artisans Ayutthaya in Bangkok.

Here is a very unusual combination of wood and glass blocks. And it was from unsold remnants of the blocks, which were considered unmarketable, that this project began

As the "mortar" of fixing the blocks is a steel frame, which is covered with wood from the outside.

This gives an interesting effect, where the color of the wood is reflected in the glass gaps.

The technology itself is original and seems to have no analogues yet.

Недавно мы писали заметку о стеклянных кирпичах и стеклоблоках, о том как они переживают новый виток популярности, в том числе в использовании во внешней отделке.

Вот еще один впечатляющий пример их применения на фасаде.

Здание ресторана Artisans Ayutthaya в Бангкоке.

Здесь очень необычное сочетание дерева и стеклоблоков. Причем именно с нераспроданных остатков блоков, признанных неликвидом, начался этот проект.

В качестве “раствора” скрепляющего блоки выступает стальной каркас, который и закрыт снаружи деревом.

Это дает интересный эффект, когда цвет дерева отражается в стеклянных промежутках.

Сама технология оригинальна и кажется еще не имеет аналогов.

A bright, colorful façade of the Ecuadorian pavilion at the Milan exhibition.

What do you think it's finished with? Solar panels, metal or vinyl siding?

No. This is an unusual way to finish a facade with anodized aluminum chains from the Spanish company Kriskadecor.

Until recently, the use of such chains was available only for the interior.

Now there is a variant for the facade. Among the main characteristics are the lack of conductivity, non-combustibility, resistance to rust, acids and oxidation.

It is possible to adjust the finish to any size and design, reproduce images or patterns.

It's also a cool tool for shading. See how you can use it.

Opacity from 40% to 60% when light falls at an angle of 90º.

I'm sharing a tip from a recent project.

The subject of my embarrassment was the blank side wall on the second floor. It was too knocked out and looked disproportionate, so I put false shutters on it to simulate a window opening. This made the façade more harmonious and connected.

And to smooth out the impression of different-level additions to the house, the basement stone rises to the walls in a few places.

Another option that came to my mind was the stylization in the form of a half-timbered house. This way the house looks more austere and collected, also because of the cooler gray color. The decorative beams on the façade match the wooden railings on the porch.

I don't even know which option I like better, but the customer has already made up his mind, he likes the first option better.

The first building with a Corten steel facade appeared in Russia.

This is the Ferrum Business Center in St. Petersburg, on the site of the former machine-building plant Rossiya.

What's remarkable about this material? It is a composite alloy, very resistant to corrosion and extremely strong, also called "eternal" steel.

It has a velvety texture and a distinctive rusty red patina. The secret is that its dense oxide film (rust) acts as a protective shell, preventing further water penetration into the metal. Resistance to weathering is especially important in the St. Petersburg climate.

It is interesting that the patina does not appear immediately, but in the process of use, which means that over time the appearance changes. There are even special preparations for the controlled creation of the oxide film.

In order to give the simple rectangular volume of the office building a distinctive look, the technique of alternating flat and protruding steel modules was used, creating the illusion of weaving around a glass base. And it looks either like floating threads of "warp and weft" fabric or a basket made of birch bark.

The Ferrum BC is only part of a large-scale reconstruction of an industrial area, for example, there is already a building dedicated to the theatrical projects of the artist A. Benoit, known from "Russian Seasons of Diagelev".

The designs were developed by the architectural bureau TCHOBAN VOSS Architekten.

This project is several years old, but I periodically return to it in my mind.

What is so compelling about it? What techniques made it memorable?

If all the walls were uniformly covered only in brickwork, it would make the eyes glaze over, and the protruding part with the garages would detract attention.

So I decided to highlight the central part of the house with lighter plaster, and to make it not look like a foreign spot, lay out on it a mosaic decorative panel, to tie in with the mottled brick.

Pay attention to the decors, they are not all around the window, so as not to overload the house, but only at the top and bottom, to emphasize the openings.

The color of the window frames is graphite, in the tone of the roof; you have to agree, it would not be the same with white plastic.

The result is an interesting example of an understated classic, but with a twist.

I'm sharing what techniques I used in a recent project.

First, the sharp tongs and stone trim already create a Tudor style reference.

Second, the noble color combination of blue shutters and reddish brick. This color pairing is rarely seen here, and for good reason, in my opinion. The roof color is graphite, the most inconspicuous, so as not to draw attention away from itself.

Third, instead of the classic decors around the windows, decorative vertical brickwork.

Fourth, the same belt of brick serves as a conventional boundary between the plinth and the wall, and also serves as a crowning eaves under the roof.

Fifth, a strict pattern without unnecessary curls on the wrought iron fences.

I think we got a good example of style, correlated with modernity.