Plane & Shadow Facade Studio · Corrick Mills & Foundry Row · Drawn & hung
A facade is a decision you make once, at scale.
Plane & Shadow designs and hangs dark modern envelopes for infill houses — flush-joint fiber-cement panel, standing-seam zinc at the accents, cold-black finishes that hold their matte through August. Every wall is drawn at the studio, nested on the CNC, and hung by the same two people who drew it: a 12 mm rainscreen, concealed fasteners, and shadow gaps straight enough to strike a line off.
Ornament is not a sin. Indecision is. A wall that tries to please everyone reads as nothing from across the street.
Panel — the field
Flush-joint fiber-cement panel on an engineered clip: no lap, no face fasteners, no caulk lines crossing the field. The joints are 12 mm and open — the wall drains behind them and the shadow reads as the ornament. Cold-black pigment is IR-reflective, so the matte stays matte and the wall stops being an oven by July.
Seam — the accent
Standing-seam zinc where the facade turns — entry walls, parapet caps, the chimney wrap. Zinc patinas from bright to soft graphite on its own schedule and protects itself doing it. We fold every seam on a brake in the studio, because a field-folded seam is straight until the day it is not, and the day it is not is the day you cannot stop seeing it.
Drawn & priced per square foot
The material sheet
Studio rate includes the drawings, the nesting, the fabrication and the hang — the sheet is the whole job, not a menu of parts. Cold-black pigment and concealed clips are standard on every line.
Plane & Shadow sheet — 2026
Flush-joint panel field$12.40 / sq ft
Fiber cement on engineered clips, 12 mm open joints, cold-black or muted pigment
Standing-seam zinc accentfrom $21.80 / sq ft
Site-measured, studio-folded, concealed clips — entries, parapets, chimney wraps
Cold-black IR matte finish+$1.50 / sq ft
Solar-reflective dark pigment; the matte holds, the wall stays cool
Concealed-fastener corrugated$9.80 / sq ft
Galvalume for garages, studios and the rear elevation that faces the alley
Rainscreen & barrier package$2.30 / sq ft
WRB, tapes, 12 mm grid, insect-screened vents at plate and soffit
Soffit & gloss fascia$14–19 / lin ft
Flat-cut soffit with the shadow gap carried through; fascia folded to match the accents
Corrick Mills & Foundry Row, 2024 — 2026
The envelope book
Six envelopes from the book, photographed at the hand-over walk. Nothing staged — the gaps are that straight, which is the entire point of the studio.
Week 0
The studio consult
Two hours, real samples under your sky, and the first elevation sketch on the wall. You leave with a direction, not a brochure — and the fixed square-foot number follows within a week.
Weeks 1–3
Drawings & engineering
Shop drawings to the millimetre: panel layout, clip grid, seam folds, the shadow-gap schedule at every transition. The drawings are what the permit sees and what the crew hangs — the same file, twice used.
Week 4
Nesting & fabrication
The field is nested on the CNC — one house, one sheet-plan, waste counted. Zinc accents are folded on the brake in the studio the same week, numbered for the wall they belong to.
Weeks 5–7
Close-in & hang
Tear-off where there is one, the barrier and rainscreen grid up, then panels clicked to clips in the drawn order. Two hangers, no subs, no weather window missed on purpose.
Final days
Gap, gloss & hand
The shadow gaps are checked with a straightedge at every course, the fascia and soffit close the line, and the hand-over walk happens with the drawings in hand — the wall measured against them, not against memory.
The studio sequence
Seven weeks, drawn to hung
One file runs the whole job — sketch, permit, nest, hang. Nothing is decided twice, which is why nothing reads decided badly.
What the studio owes you
The drawings are the contract. Every panel position, every seam fold, every gap width on the sheet is what goes on the wall — and if the wall and the drawing ever disagree, the drawing wins and the re-hang is ours.
The drawing clause
If any element of the finished envelope departs from the shop drawings — a panel out of order, a gap off schedule, a seam folded to the wrong profile — we remove and redo it at studio cost, drawings posted at the site until the wall matches. Ten years on materials and labor, transferable once.
Every contractor showed us vinyl in a binder. Plane & Shadow brought three dark samples to the site at noon, watched them for an hour in our light, and told us which one would go chalky — the expensive one. The finished wall is the drawing, to the millimetre, and the shadow gaps are the ornament our street talks about.
Our builder warned us dark facades become ovens. The studio’s IR matte pigment was the answer nobody else even mentioned — the wall reads matte black and stays cooler than our old grey clapboard did. The gap schedule is so straight the inspector photographed it.
They hung the alley elevation in corrugated and saved the zinc for the one wall everyone sees — the budget conversation was honest, not upsell. Two people, seven weeks, and the hand-over walk was done against the drawings with a straightedge. That is a studio, not a siding company.
Questions the street asks
The five that come up on every consult. Yours can be stranger — the studio has heard most of them.
Do dark facades really overheat?
Ordinary ones do — a conventional black can run 30°F hotter than its surroundings and cook the cavity behind it. Our cold-black pigments are IR-reflective: the color absorbs the eye’s light and reflects the heat-carrying wavelengths, so the wall reads matte black and behaves like a mid-grey. The up-charge is on the sheet, and the summer pays it back.
Why open joints instead of caulked ones?
Because a rainscreen wall is supposed to breathe and caulked joints on a dark field crack on a schedule you can set a clock by. The 12 mm gap drains, vents and casts the shadow line that replaces the ornament. Behind it: insect-screened vents at the plate and the soffit, and a wall that dries from both sides.
Can you work with our architect?
Happily — half our envelopes arrive as a design intent we detail, engineer and hang. The studio’s drawings then carry both signatures, and the architect gets the as-nested file at hand-over. The drawing clause covers their design exactly as it covers ours.
What does a zinc accent cost over time?
Less than paint. Zinc patinas to soft graphite, self-heals scratches, and is fully recyclable at end of life — the seam walls we folded in 2015 have had exactly zero maintenance. The entry is the price of a used car; the thirty years it stays handsome is the studio’s argument.
Is a studio facade right on a modest budget?
The sheet is honest about the hierarchy: corrugated galvalume on the elevations nobody sees, the panel field on the two everyone does, zinc only where the facade turns. Several book projects came in under the quote their builder wrote for lap siding — the discipline is the design, not the price tag.
Studio consults on Thursdays · two envelopes commissioned per month, spring through fall · (555) 043-9071 · studio@planeandshadow.example
Bring us a wall
Address area, the elevation that bothers you most, and the budget range you would rather hear than guess. The consult is $150, credited to the envelope — real samples, under your sky, with the first sketch on the studio wall before you leave. studio@planeandshadow.example