Brick or Render? The Same Building, Two Ways

One of the most useful things a CGI can do is let you see a decision before it's made. With this building, the question was simple: what happens if you take the brick away and finish the walls in white render instead?

Same bones, different skin

Nothing structural has changed. It's still the same building, with the slate mansard roof and dormers on top, sash windows with thin glazing bars, pale stone bands running across the front and a white portico with fluted columns over the dark front door. What changes is the surface, and that turns out to change almost everything about how the building feels.

What the render does

Where the brick version feels warm and settled, the render version feels lighter, calmer and a little more formal. The stone bands and window cills show up much more clearly against the white wall, so the horizontal lines of the building become a bigger part of the design. The black downpipes and the small Juliet balconies also stand out more, and they look crisp rather than blending in.

Keeping a link to the street

The brick hasn't disappeared completely. It comes back as a feature above each window, in the same mix of reds and browns as before. That small detail matters, because the building sits next to older red-brick buildings, and those brick heads tie the new walls back to their neighbours.

What's in the windows

In the close-up of the lower windows, look at the glass. The red-brick buildings opposite are reflected in it, which is exactly what real windows do. It's a good reminder that a render finish doesn't stand apart from its surroundings. The street is still there, just in the reflection rather than in the walls.

So which works better?

Honestly, it depends on what you want from the street. Brick blends in with its neighbours and feels like it's always been there. Render makes more of a statement and lets the architectural details do the talking. I like both, which makes this a hard one to choose.

So over to you: brick or render?