Fiber Cement Facades in Architecture: 9 Notable Examples

José Tomás Franco

7 years ago

Lighthouse / Room11 Architects. Image © Benjamin Hosking

Interested in building light and modular facades with a rustic and monolithic appearance?

Composed of cement, cellulose, and mineral materials, fiber cement allows us to clad walls in a light, non-combustible, and rain-resistant way, generating facades with different textures, colors, and tones. Its panels are easily manageable, perforable, and can configure ventilated facades when installed with a certain separation between the rear wall. Check after the break for 9 projects that have cleverly used fiber cement as the primary material in facades.

24 Housing Units / Zanon + Bourbon Architects

The facade of this group of houses consists of panels perforated by metal frames, which include lacquered wooden windows. The random arrangement of fiber cement panels generates variations in their different orientations.

Single Family House Hoffstad / Knut Hjeltnes

Located in a wet and windy terrain, this project took special care in choosing the exterior cladding of the house, covering its wooden structure with fiber cement panels that respond effectively to rainwater.

Lighthouse / Room11 Architects

The exterior image of this house mixes fiber cement panels with blocks of cement, gravel, and vegetation, highlighting the windows and wooden doors in the middle of the gray texture of its walls.

Villa GK / CORE Architects

The fiber cement panels have been used in this case as a shading strategy, ensuring the privacy of the rooms and delivering a characteristic image to the rest of the building.

GZ House / Studio Cáceres Lazo

As its architects say, in this house in Chile, fiber cement sheets were used to “clad the whole of the steel structure that arises from the slab that shapes the house. An air chamber between this skin and the house’s inner envelope is placed to help with its thermal comfort. Because of its color, the cladding and concrete give the house a monolithic appearance, only subverted by the glass façade that faces the panorama.”

Livsrum – Cancer Counseling Center / EFFEKT

This hospital in Denmark uses white fiber cement as a way to unify the different units of the project, each with a specific function. In this way, the building delivers a clean image towards the street at a scale that is friendly to its context and its users.