A Facade That Changes Color With the Weather

At eleven degrees and rising the building is the colour of wet slate. By the afternoon it is closer to sand.

Buildings of this kind are rarely decided by architects alone. A structural engineer, a planning officer and a facilities manager who will never be named in the credits each moved this one several metres from where it started, and the drawings record the argument.

Rena Osei, who visited on three days with different forecasts, has been close to it from the start.

Background

A thermochromic coating shifts the exterior tone by several degrees of value depending on humidity and heat.

Two of the people who started the project had left by the time it finished, and the handover notes are now part of the studio's standard kit.

Longevity is the unanswered question: the coating is warranted for eight years.

We can predict it to within about an hour. After that the weather does what it likes.

the material scientist on the team

The method

The effect is strongest on the north elevation, which was not the design intent and is now the side that appears in every photograph.

What stops this being a one-off is the documentation. The practice has published the details, which means the next team does not have to rediscover the same three failures.

Peers have been generous in public and more pointed in private, mostly about cost.

There is no shortage of people willing to call it inevitable in hindsight. Nobody involved describes it that way.

Where it goes

The practice is monitoring the panels monthly and has promised to publish the data.