A big congratulations to Solares Architecture for making headlines in the Globe and Mail yesterday. Once again, Solares shows that they are singularly focused on producing beautiful high performance homes and BlueGreen Group is proud to collaborate on the energy detailing for their projects.
In a day and age where art trumps functionality, it’s increasingly hard to get any press, but Solares manages it in this awkwardly titled article “Under the skin: How investing in the mechanics of the home will save money“. I say awkwardly, because, Solares tends to emphasise superb envelope detailing and de-empahsise mechanical systems. They do that knowing moving parts in mechanical systems breakdown, but a well built building envelope has few moving parts to breakdown aside from operable doors and windows. Writer John Bentley Mays might be catering to a high brow audience that he suspects craves art at the expense of functionality, sustainability and durability when he goes on to suggest “The office now needs to get busy with the art.”
We do a lot of diagnostics on building failures and I’d love to spend a day with Mays to talk about and show him how often ‘art’ fails, often dramatically, leaving really rich homeowners having to repair complex envelopes. I hope going forward he understands that complex envelopes require superb planning and detailing – which Solares excels at – and that the builder needs to be at the top of their game when assembling. It’s too bad that Mays didn’t talk to the client who commissioned the project in question or he would have quickly realised the client didn’t want art, they wanted performance.
Good work Solares!