Public Spaces

Public buildings are the work with the least room for a wrong decision. A memorial or a town hall is not repainted every few years, the stone is often the only original material left, and whatever goes on it has to be reversible or at least compatible with what is underneath.

Most of this work is stone repair rather than a finish. At Douglas Town Hall the weathered sandstone was cut back and built up in KEIM Restauro stone-repair mortar, then dressed and colour-matched with Restauro Lasur — a conservation approach that keeps as much of the original stone as possible instead of cutting whole stones out. The Andreas War Memorial, over thirty feet of it, took several stages and finished in a weathered terracotta render chosen to sit with the church behind it.

The recurring mistake we get called to undo is an acrylic coating. Acrylic forms a film. On a modern wall that is fine; on an old solid wall it is not, because moisture has to move through the structure and evaporate off the face. Seal the face and the water sits in the wall until it pushes the coating off. Where a building of any age needs coating, it wants a breathable mineral system, not a plastic one.