Metal Screen: Modern House Detail

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Things are really starting to heat up on our modern infill project and so I thought I would focus on one of the exterior finishes before most of the attention turns towards the interior for a while. This is the stainless steel metal screen that is very prominent on the front elevation, covering the large window just above the front door. This screen element has been in place early on from the schematic design phase.

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This is a sketch I drew up while sitting at a conference from almost three years ago. I knew that in order to make this screen look the way it needed to look, it had to be incorporated into the structure of the building rather than looking applied after the fact. It was also important that the way the screen be built be reflected in the design – a concept that is very important to me.

 

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This sketch just above is pretty explanatory even if it isn’t a work of art. Maybe if I knew that I would be using it here, explaining the design and construction process I would have drawn it differently (I can understand my thought process with fewer strokes than what others might need). All that having been said, it is still an efficient diagram of the final product and how it was assembled.

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This is the front entry way … looking at the large window, all that is in place are the long vertical members. You can see that the stainless steel members are welded to beams up above the soffit and align with the window mullions.

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In this picture, the horizontal members have been added. In the picture above, this is the corner of the front window. There is a detail here that I think is pretty interesting and was important in the original design concept and assembly technique. Lets take a closer look…

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You can see on the horizontal members that there are square notches at a regular interval. These are the spaces where the square stainless steel rods will get placed. The spacing is just under 4″ and the rods themselves are 3/8″ x 3/8″.

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Everything is in place (well, as far as you know it is…) This is what the stainless steel screen looks like once all the pieces are put in place.

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A close up look at the 3/8″ square stainless steel rods … that zinc standing seam metal siding behind the screen. If you missed the post on the zinc siding, you can play catch-up and read about it here.

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If you were walking up the front steps and about the ring the bell on this house, this is the view you would get. Part of the reason we installed this screen was to provide visual interest at the front elevation, but that’s not the most important reason. This house is pretty large and we have made many moves so that the scale of the building fit in well with the other houses in the neighborhood. The screen provides another layer of scale to the massing and helps bring the size of the entry component down to human size.  The layering of the different materials and the size of their pieces will help the building be readable to people viewing the house from the street.

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This photo is looking up at the backside of the stainless steel screen between it and the zinc siding.

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This picture probably doesn’t mean much to anyone other than me but I took it because of the shadow on the wall. I spent a lot of time trying to determine just how far the rods would extend down beneath the lowest horizontal support member. I built several 3d variations of this screen and entry wall in SketchUp and the shadow studies I looked at eventually helped me make my decision. When I was on-sight and saw the shadows seen above, I thought I had made the right decision.

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The latest look at the front entry. There is a handrail that is very similar in design to the entry screen that will eventually wrap the roof top terrace you can see on the upper left-hand side. In addition, the landscape will make a huge impact on this project … right now the house looks like it landed on this site from outer space.

Cheers

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