Editorial Magazine 2015/4
LET’S SHOW WOODY ALLEN THAT ANODIZED AND
COATED ALUMINIUM PANELS CAN BE ELEGANT AND ATTRACTIVE
“In Woody Allen’s masterpiece, the critically disparaged Deconstructing Harry, Woody’s character — a loathsome writer — imagines himself in hell and meets The Devil (played by Billy Crystal). Woody takes an industrial elevator down to the ninth (and lowest) ring of hell and walks into the atrium, from where he sees the damned in boiling vats and others being prodded to their place of eternal rest by imps.
The first person he actually meets and greets in hell is balding, aged man dressed in a vulgar sports coat and tie, an imp behind him leading him on to his place of damnation.
Woody reaches out and touches the man on the arm.
“What did you do?” he says. The man, briefly interrupting his journey to eternal damnation, confesses,
“I invented aluminum siding.”
Francis “Frank” Hoess was a Hammond, Indiana artisan, businessman and real estate developer who is considered the father of aluminum siding.”
This interesting and humoristic tale which is part of a movie by Woody Allen, demonstrates how, not long ago, aluminium was considered a vulgar or bad looking component, at least if talking about quality constructions.
Nowadays, instead, the available technologies confer to anodized and painted aluminium noble characteristics, and this material is used for quality finishes, for architectural components and it enriches buildings, both internally and externally.
Anodized aluminium reaches these results after coated aluminium (with which architects have been able to use an infinity of colours and special effects), but it finally reached extraordinary perspectives.
Among the various novelties presented at the 9th World Congress Aluminium Two Thousand, in Florence, in May 2015, there is one which is destined to change the aluminium world: the possibility to decorate extruded profiles or laminates with a new graphic system, which guarantees that the anodized metal has high resistance to light and to corrosion also in external environments.
Until now the decoration graphic systems were based on the use of inks which were not resistant to light and corrosion and the final effects were obtained with complicated masking systems which required a massive use of manpower with very high costs and many limits in the types of masks that could be used.
Today, any type of drawing or decoration, from the most simple to the most complicated, is possible with the use of computerized machinery and the designs are prepared with the use of a computer by personnel who needs to have only basic graphic notions.
The effects that can be obtained, simple or special, are infinite, without big productive limits and especially without graphic design limits.*
Maybe today, in another movie, Woody Allen would not place the inventor of “aluminium sidings” in hell.
*See Finishing News, pag. 44, Ref. 41511
Walter Dalla Barba
Editor
