Screen Play: 7 Ideas for Dressing Up a Building Façade

If you’re looking to design a unique building envelope, take a look at some of our favorite exterior screening products.

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Whether shading a building, animating façades or enclosing extended outdoor space, screen systems serve a purpose while also creating a unique building envelope. And the current crop of building screen systems and materials are not only vast and varied, they’re also getting better in both performance and aesthetics. Take a look at some of our favorite exterior screening products to get ideas in amping up your next building envelope project.

Shildan: Fabrik

We were first wowed by this system at AIA Expo and continue to be wowed. Fabrik by Flexbrick works like an architectural “textile” in that it creates a swath over structural elements with a flexible stainless steel framework holding a screen of terra cotta, glass or wood units. Architects can specify the material but also configuration, patterns, colors and finishes, unit sizes and spacing. With such a system as this, for example, one can design what looks like an intricate brick latticework, but in much less time. Use it to shade, create privacy or division or form balcony screen elements.

VMZinc: Corrugated Wall Panels

Part of the company’s rainscreen offerings, this self-supporting zinc-panel system boasts an eye-catching corrugated texture that creates a play of light and shadow through different times of day. They can be perforated for ventilation and transparency needs, as well.

Haver & Boecker OHG: Imagic Weave

With open and airy weaves, this architectural mesh resembles a transparent scrim over a building, allowing one to still see the architectural design of the structure. However, with embedded LEDs controlled by Traxon Technologies, it becomes a dynamic, animated media façade when powered on. The slim LED profiles are actually hidden on the back of the stainless steel mesh so as to not visually disrupt the design in any way. Two different LED technologies are offered: SMT allows for broad viewing angles and perfect color mixing, while THT boasts high brightness levels that are suitable even for daylight presentations.

NBK Architectural Terracotta: TERRART Baguette

Another architectural terra cotta specialist that continues to impress us is NBK, whose TERRART Baguettes create striking façade compositions whether in single or muted colors or vibrant hues. These ceramic pipes can be specified in square, circular or oblong cross-sections depending on what type of visual effect you’re going for. They’re most ideal for solar control applications but can also be used for parapet or balcony elements.

McNichols: ECO-MESH Trellis System

What sets this product apart from the others is that it screens but eventually gets covered up, too. As its name suggests, the system is a vertical foundation for climbing plants to grow and expand onto, forming a green wall. These make for excellent façade elements and outdoor space enclosures and shielding.

Sunbrella: Awning Fabric

Over the past few years, Sunbrella’s Future of Shade design competition has been proving that performance awning fabric can be made into far more than, well, awnings and canopies. Architects and designers have risen to the challenge in rethinking how to use these high-performance textiles in building-shade applications. Among some of the stunning designs was Twisty, conceived by Kevin Chu of FABLAB Design as an artistic blind system and realized as an installation at the James Royal Palm in Miami. While the twisted blinds screened poolside cabanas, it’s not hard to imagine that the concept could be explored further for façade use, as well, similarly to the rhomboid textile awnings that form the dimensional façade designed by Gerber Architekten for the King Fahad National Library in Riyadh.

Cascade Architectural: Fabricoil Light Diffusion Systems

The coiled wire fabric can add a shading or decorative element to building façades, and it also beautifully diffuses light, in some cases making a building or outdoor space look ethereal at night. This lightweight material is available in different gauges, weave sizes and colors and is also 100-percent recyclable after use.