Structure, Facade and Beauty

The exterior character of a building is often determined by how structure relates to the building envelope.

  Architects frequently explore and exploit spatial relationships between these two elements in order to express their architectural ideas and generally enrich their designs.

  Structure plays numerous roles in contributing to the visual appearance of a building facade, through modulation, adding depth and texture, and acting as a visual screen or filter. In all of them the structural scale must relate appropriately to the scales of non-structure elements in order to achieve the desired outcome.