page_title: Weathering steel
section_title: Uses
hierarchical_section_title: Weathering steel / Uses
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Belgique - Louvain-la-Neuve - IBA - Mauro Staccioli - Anneau
context_page_description: Weathering steel, often referred to by the genericised trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as corten steel, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rust-like appearance after several years' exposure to weather.
  U.S. Steel holds the registered trademark on the name COR-TEN. The name COR-TEN refers to the two distinguishing properties of this type of steel: corrosion resistance and tensile strength. Although USS sold its discrete plate business to International Steel Group in 2003, it still sells COR-TEN branded material in strip-mill plate and sheet forms.
  The original COR-TEN received the standard designation A242 from the ASTM International standards group. Newer ASTM grades are A588 and A606 for thin sheet. All alloys are in common production and use.
  The surface oxidation of weathering steel takes six months, but surface treatments can accelerate the oxidation to as little as two hours.
context_section_description: Weathering steel is popularly used in outdoor sculptures for its distressed antique appearance. One example is the large Chicago Picasso sculpture, which stands in the plaza of the Daley Center Courthouse in Chicago, which is also constructed of weathering steel. Other examples include Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk; several of Robert Indiana's Numbers sculptures and his original Love sculpture; numerous works by Richard Serra; the Alamo sculpture in Manhattan, NY; the Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York; the Angel of the North, Gateshead; and Broadcasting Tower at Leeds Beckett University.
  It is also used in bridge and other large structural applications such as the New River Gorge Bridge, the second span of the Newburgh–Beacon Bridge (1980), and the creation of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) and MONA.
  It is very widely used in marine transportation, in the construction of intermodal containers as well as visible sheet piling along recently widened sections of London's M25 motorway.
  The first use of weathering steel for architectural applications was the John Deere World Headquarters in Moline, Illinois. The building was designed by architect Eero Saarinen, and completed in 1964. The main buildings of Odense University, designed by Knud Holscher and Jørgen Vesterholt and built 1971–1976, are clad in weathering steel, earning them the nickname Rustenborg (Danish for "rusty fortress"). In 1977, Robert Indiana created a Hebrew version of the Love sculpture made from weathering steel using the four-letter word ahava (אהבה, "love" in Hebrew) for the Israel Museum Art Garden in Jerusalem, Israel. In Denmark, all masts for supporting the catenary on electrified railways are made of weathering steel for aesthetic reasons.
  Weathering steel was used in 1971 for the Highliner  electric cars built by the St. Louis Car Company for Illinois Central Railroad. The use of weathering steel was seen as a cost-cutting move in comparison with the contemporary railcar standard of stainless steel.  A subsequent order in 1979 was built to similar specs, including weathering steel bodies, by Bombardier. The cars were painted, a standard practice for weathering steel railcars. The durability of weathering steel did not live up to expectations, with rust holes appearing in the railcars. Painting may have contributed to the problem, as painted weathering steel is no more corrosion-resistant than conventional steel, because the protective patina will not form in time to prevent corrosion over a localized area of attack such as a small paint failure. These cars have been retired by 2016.
  Weathering steel was used to build the exterior of Barclays Center, made up of 12,000 pre-weathered steel panels engineered by ASI Limited & SHoP Construction. The New York Times says of the material, "While it can look suspiciously unfinished to the casual observer, it has many fans in the world of art and architecture."
caption: Anneau by Mauro Staccioli, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
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