7 AM, Saturday, March 7, 2026 WPKN 89.5 FM wpkn.org

We live with the outsides of everyone else’s buildings. The bulk and size is often what we notice most, but what materials are used: their color, contrast, or banality is impossible to avoid: and exteriors have changed over the last generation because materials have changed…

Have you noticed them? Whether it’s stick-frame-over-podium buildings (above, left) or conventional midrises (right), facades are now canvases for the shallowest of decoration. While most single-family homes are still wrapped in stock siding in imitation of old-timey shingles and clapboards, these new facades have one critical difference: the rejection of past precedent.

The agent of this change is a new generation of siding materials: “cladding,” “rain screens,” “ventilating facades,” and the newest versions of paint: “acrylic/urethane/silicone/elastomeric” coatings. Architects can’t avoid the relentless, full-court press from product manufacturers, and this new exterior window-dressing now extends to the wide use of “exterior cladding consultants,” who shoulder the liability of the architect’s ignorance of these products.

Joining us on DESIGN NOW are architect, writer and historian Mark Hewitt, architect, professor and maker Lindsay Suter, and architect Jay Brotman of FCA architects, formerly known as Svigals and Partners in New Haven: who create beauty while others make what we see all around us,