Meditnor

Think about the ‘Fast Fashion’ industry and how the business model of making clothes to be fashionable for a very short period of time is causing important environmental problems. There is a ‘take, make, dispose’ cycle happening with fashion. You can compare it to a ‘take, make, dispose’ cycle in the furniture industry, with wardrobes being a prime example.

If you buy a well-made, fitted wardrobe, it is likely to be built to last and will not fall apart or warp. Not only does this give you years of trouble-free use, but you are also removing the waste created by the ‘take, make, dispose’ cycle, as you are not having to constantly replace it. For Bespoke Fitted Wardrobes, contact https://lamco-design.co.uk/bespoke-fitted-wardrobes

If you think about it, when you buy a flatpack wardrobe, you are not buying a piece of furniture for life but rather something that will have a short shelf life. They are usually made from cheap materials that are not of high quality and will start to deteriorate quickly. They don’t get built to last; they are built to be sold, as a cheap and quick solution to meet a demand for storage space.

The first sign that they will start to deteriorate is usually after about 3-5 years, when the first of the hanging rail clips start to break. If this happens, the whole wardrobe needs to be taken apart, and the broken rails and supporting brackets need to be replaced. The wardrobe will then start to lose its structural integrity and will eventually start to get wonky. This can then start to warp the panels, and as a result, you will start to lose the usable height and depth of the wardrobe.

Concrete was having a bad time in the latter half of the 20th century. Brutalist buildings in the sixties and seventies, though theoretically bold and visionary, were often depressing and unloved in reality. They contributed to an increasingly negative public image of concrete, a material that was seen as cold, grey and inhuman. It was the stuff of which car parks and flyovers were made, the architectural equivalent of giving up.

Something has shifted. A stroll through an important architectural exhibition or a scan through the work of the practices winning the awards that matter is enough to suggest that concrete is back on the agenda. Not with any sort of shyness or embarrassment, and not because it’s cheap. It’s because it does things that no other material can. For Concrete Forest Of Dean, contact https://www.monstermixconcrete.co.uk/concrete-forest-of-dean/

Part of the reason is a deep sense of honesty. As we’ve seen with the cladding scandal, synthetic finishes and everything from glass fibre to glitter, we seem to be addicted to hiding what our buildings are actually made of. There’s something very appealing, then, about a building that tells you exactly what it is. The structure becomes the aesthetic, and the construction is the design.

Another part of the reason is that concrete can do things that other materials can’t. It can be moulded into curves and cantilevers, with surfaces that change as the light catches them. The formwork is the mould, and the mould can be anything you want.

The implications are genuinely extraordinary, especially if you’ve never really thought about it before. Finally, it’s just that enough time has passed. The brutalist buildings that survived long enough have been listed and celebrated. The preservationists are already fighting over them. Concrete, it seems, wasn’t the problem. It’s what we did with it that was.

Brise soleil is French for “sun breaker,” and that tells you precisely what it’s designed for. It blocks direct sunlight during the hottest parts of the day without blocking ambient light. This is how it works.Continue reading →