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Awnings encourage natural light and offer shade protection

June 1st, 2023

Natural light can help reduce energy usage in our buildings. This is a lesson known for centuries but seemingly forgotten after the 1940s with postwar technological advances in air conditioning (coupled with the Modernist design movement that declared “ornament is a crime”). These stripped-down building facades spoke volumes about a new era of high-tech materials […]

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Innovative fabric facades

April 1st, 2020

Changing the look and function of architecture for a sustainable future.  by Bruce N. Wright, FAIA Architects are fond of describing their buildings in the metaphoric terms of the human body. The supporting structure is often referred to as the skeleton that holds it up; the enclosure (or envelope) is the skin that protects the […]

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Building facades and vertical shade

February 1st, 2018

For decades now, since the revelation of the 1970s back-to-earth, energy enlightenment era of oil embargoes and the beginning of the environmentalism movement, architects and government officials have acknowledged the importance of making ever more energy-efficient buildings. It has been proven that buildings (the construction of them and the manufacturing of all the materials that […]

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