Stretching metal: metal applications in building are constantly changing. These pioneering examples show how wire mesh can be used to evoke both opacity and translucency, to alter with every movement of the clouds and the time of day. (Materials).

Stainless-steel wire mesh draws its conspicuous quality from two poles -- change and permanence. It is an aesthetically versa lie material which reflects changes in nature and in city life in combination with the permanence of steel cloaking.

Susan Dawson speaks to GKD -- Gebr Kufferath AG of Duren in Germany about their revolutionary range of metal mesh products. The stability of stainless steel, the optical variability and formability of the woven mesh structure, its reflective quality and transparency are the characteristics of the material. It has a practically unlimited service life and is completely recyclable, fulfilling the expectations of intelligent facility management oriented to long-term sustainability of value. The material is weather- and corrosion-proof with a long life cycle which requires only simple maintenance and cleaning -- mostly through rain, or, when required, with high pressure cleaners and brushes.

Norman Foster insists that the individual has a right to daylight. In this sense, facades made of stainless-steel wire mesh can be described as daylight architecture or light architecture, since light is the main source of the aesthetic impact of buildings enclosed within such facades.

Stainless-steel mesh facades are composed of fine cables lengthwise and monofilament rods crosswise which give the structure tensile strength in the one direction and flexibility and cross-stability in the other, Its flexibility inspires spatial compositions which interact with the surroundings, and a wide variety of forms and unusual shapes. Helmut Jahn used a 5800 square metre facade of woven wire mesh to cloak Europe's largest car park at the Cologne/Bonn Airport. The material lends a quality of rural art to the St Anton Railway Station at Arlberg by Manzl-Ritsch-Sandner Architects, highly commended in the 2001 ar+d award for emerging architects (AR December 2001) and to Dominique Perrault's Cycling Arena and Indoor Swimming Pool in Berlin. Its formability allows it to be adapted to all shapes of buildings, even to completely round ones like the EXPO Pavilion Planet.

Translucent structures are dominant currents in the architectural language of commercial and public utility buildings. They transmit light and reflect the self-image of modern enterprise -- openness and communication. Helmut Jahn's Sony Centre in Berlin is a double-shelled building with facades of glass and stainless-steel wire mesh, providing a background for a colourful social melting-pot while reflecting the corporate image of the electronics company.

Our perception not only of exteriors but also of interior spaces is influenced by the mood of the lighting. Without obstructing the view out through the windows, woven wire mesh acts as a sunscreen while guiding and spreading adequate natural daylight into interior rooms. The light transmission values of a typical wire mesh screen (at 50 degree angle of incidence with unobstructed views) is virtually the same as a conventional sunscreen system with almost completely closed louvres (as measured by the IFT Institute).

Wire mesh can be formed into sunscreens which retract when not in use. The 1600 square metre glass facade of the main administrative building of VW-Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany, designed by Henn Architekten Ingenieure, is cloaked with motorized retractable sunscreens of woven wire mesh.

An additional advantage of wire-mesh screens, according to a recent research project, is that the space between glass and mesh acts as a flue to conduct excess heat upwards to the eaves of the building to be expelled over the roof or to be re-used.

The interaction of the material with light varies with the density of the mesh. As a multi-functional facade, it can be used as a projection screen for colour and lighting effects, for example for company logos or for audio-visual entertainment programmes, as has been done at the new airport car parks in Barcelona or at the Sony Centre in Berlin. As part of the revitalization of a former industrial area, the six-storey EXPOMEDIA building towers over Saarbrucken as an enormous 'lightcube' from within which lighting effects shine through the material of its optically seamless external facade (p68). Designed by Kramm & Strigl, the building is clad with a stainless-steel mesh facade. During the day the mesh has a reflecting metallic shine; at night it acts as a projection surface for light shows. A system of light rods, set behind the mesh panels, is computer-controlled to assume various colours.

Textile material structures are an invitation to revitalize old buildings and to upgrade the optical value of public utility buildings with unattractive support structures. The option of conservation and modernization by over-cladding with woven wire mesh provides opportunities for aesthetic improvement of previously unloved architectural structures at the interfaces of public life. On car parks, wire mesh facades preserve transparency from within, let light flood in to illuminate parking levels, provide protection against wind and rain and at the same time function as a safety balustrade. In this way practical facades can be created, even with double layers between which users or service personnel can move safely without additional galleries. In the context of transport architecture -- car parks, railway stations or airports -- facade constructions must stand up to extreme mechanical strain. The 170m long facade of the St Anton Railway Station is unaffected by the turbulence caused by express trains passing through the station at speeds of 100 kilometres per hour. The Wells Fargo car park, Des Moines, Iowa, designed by Herbert, Lewis, Kruse, Blunck, has a woven wire mesh facade with a specially reinforced substructure which can withstand wind speeds of up to 136km.

Intelligent building materials for facades provide dynamic impulses, point the way to new functions and aesthetic solutions which will continue to secure and enhance the long-term value of architecture.