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Houses that can change colors

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Deru Xu

Deru Xu Aug 17, 2021

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Houses that can change colors
The exterior wall painting cycle often lasts for several years. The exterior color of the house tends to only change during renovations and renovations. My idea is to replace ordinary paint with a special painting material, which can change with the weather, season, day and night. Paint this kind of paint on the exterior wall of the house, and the house can change its color at any time.

As far as I know, there is currently a heat-sensitive material that can change color with temperature. The color of the material shows different colors in different temperature ranges, and this color change is reversible. Therefore, the characteristics of heat-sensitive materials can be used to design a house that can change with temperature by using heat-sensitive materials for exterior wall coatings. When the color of the house is no longer static, there is a sense of novelty every time you go home.

But this kind of material as exterior wall paint is susceptible to many factors and still needs to continue to develop. For example, its discoloration temperature range should be small, and the color difference between the two colors after discoloration is large. It should have good stability, not easily affected by the external environment, and not decompose under light and wet weather conditions.

paint architecture

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Creative contributions

Dynamic cities

Povilas S

Povilas S Aug 26, 2021

I like the idea not only of houses changing colors, but dynamic architecture and design in general. On a practical level, it would create problems as Samuel Bello mentioned in the comments, but on an artistic/aesthetic level, it would be amazing. Therefore the practical problems it would bring is a fair price to pay and they could be solved with some will and brainpower. Houses could not only change colors, but also shapes, rearrange themselves, etc. The city would become more similar to an organism, where many changes happen in a short time period. 

Imagine your apartment moved into a different place of the town and the town itself transformed into something unrecognizable of what was yesterday. You'd be able to track the buildings with the help of specialized software and dedicated transport would bring you to a new location automatically. 

This sounds very complicated, so why do this? Because you could live a new life each day, in a new city, a new apartment, etc. without even traveling. Our cities are very boring in that regard - they change very slowly. It takes a lot of time even in the big city for the architecture to become renewed. If such dynamic cities were built, the environment would change every day or even a few times per day. It would be impossible to orient yourself without using specialized software, but life in such a city would resemble a game that is full of novelty.

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Using a more sophisticated coating instead of paint

Povilas S

Povilas S Aug 26, 2021

Rather than using paint, it would be better to cover the walls and other surfaces with a specialized thicker coating that would enable the color change. Whatever the mechanism would be used to enable the change, the process would be protected by a transparent layer (of some polymer perhaps) placed on top. This is a way to bypass the corroding effect of the environment. The mechanism behind the color change could be physicochemical, but alternatively, digital technology could also be involved, or both methods could be combined.

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General comments

Samuel Bello

Samuel Bello3 years ago

I believe the exterior parts of the house should be kept constant for long periods because colors are a big part of a building's identity. Imagine a street where every house on it constantly changes colors, it would lead to confusion. 

Another thing to consider is the aesthetic effect of the changing colors. The colors of the different parts of the building are usually matched carefully to give an exquisite feel. If the colors of the house is changing then a similar effort will be put into making the new colors match.

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