LAST but not LEAST

 “The building envelope forms the border, the frontier, the edge, the enclosure and the joint: it is loaded with political content.”

What material are you using? What will the color be? How does your entrance draw people in? These are all questions we have to ask ourselves when we are designing the facade of a building. I really enjoyed this weeks reading that covered facades and the envelope of a building. 

I feel like many times in school it has been easy to leave the facade for last. Over the past few years I’ve leaned to think about it earlier on. For some, the facade will determine if someone wants to come in or not. The facade is everyones first impression of the space whether it be good or bad. It is what makes someone decide if they want to come in and explore the rest of the building. 

To bring this down to a personal level, I am thinking of myself and many other as we start to get jobs and find apartments. I am moving to midtown Atlanta so things are a bit more expensive than they are in Clemson, SC. There have been many times where I have skipped over an apartment based on the look of the façade only to see an interior picture and see that the interior space is totally renovated, fresh, clean, and inviting. If updates had been made to the facade then I would not have made the negative conclusion immediately. 

The facade of the building is not everything. The interior and exterior the of the space should have somewhat of an equal focus, but I DO feel that facades should begin to be more emphasized earlier on in the project lest they become “last but not least.