Fake News is not only about the click bait of deliberate misinformation. Fake News, in Architecture, can be truthful News about Fake Things.

The RIBA’s Code of Professional Conduct first principle relates to Integrity: Members shall act with honesty and integrity at all times. This professional requirement for honesty has transformed into a desire for material expression also not to tell porkies. The truth to materials is a tenet of modern architecture and holds that any material should be used where it is most appropriate and its nature should not be hidden. With this in mind the ‘brick slip’ is a fake brick upheld by manufacturers and, therefore increasingly, architects as it gives the material illusion of brick but not the ‘hassle’ of weight or need for detailing knowledge. This has lead to modern brick wallpaper facades, the currency of contemporary London housing. Planners, after all, loved brick. Easy on the eye, brick offers a non-confrontational public consultation. If correctly chosen and detailed, brick degrades arguably better than other other material. The brick slip is, as leading brick manufacturer Vandersanden declare, fake: the Fake News here is that its use is no longer giving the planners the slip but is being increasingly written out of planning consents.

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