How often do you think about how the exterior walls of a building are vented?
Some of my recent project work led me to a weep vent material that looks great. Primarily, the weep vent material allows the wall to breath while preventing insects and other particulate to block the vent. Secondly the weep vent material adds aesthetic value because it disguises the vent to look like any other mortar joint.
The material is a tough recycled polyester mesh that makes the vent visually disappear among the mortar joints.
Check out this photo of the mesh in a vent mockup:
Additionally, when we looked at this on a job site, we also looked at a piece of a polyethylene cavity cell vent:
The flexible nature of the mesh is a great fit for the existing masonry mortar joints.
What other interesting materials and solutions have you discovered on the job site or through projects?
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.