People are falling for the character and colour of weathering steel.

It looks like a rusting surface but it's not. So the sculptures, patterned screens, fences, letterboxes and cladding that Pierre Le Roux fabricates for architects, renovators, landscapers and those in search of a distinctive garden feature are not going to disintegrate over time.

In fact, the deep ochre-red patina that develops on the surface of a relatively new material known as Cor-Ten, or weathering steel, becomes more resistant to atmospheric corrosion over time.

It also becomes more texturally interesting as rain and sun exposure adds drips and dribbles, and deeper or lighter hues to the rust effect.

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A Brunswick house clad in Cor-Ten. Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui

"The patina keeps developing and becoming more different," says the self-taught 44-year-old, "and to me, that's just beautiful because I'm fascinated with texture."

Le Roux had been welding and fabricating in steel for years before he decided to exercise his natural talent for sculpture to make a feature piece for himself. "A friend wanted to buy it and it just took off from there," he says.

Seven years ago, he moved from his backyard garage to open a Clayton factory — which now employs two welders — and he also has a shop in the Auburn village in Hawthorn to show off his diverse range of offerings.

The architectural cladding, which is increasingly being specified by architects and developers who want distinctive features and facades on their buildings, is becoming more popular in Australia as more clients realise that the steel-alloy material, which contains copper and chromium and keeps developing character for up to five years, is not going to fall apart before their eyes.

The cladding is put over a pine frame or a concrete-sheet surface and, depending on the finish quality — "whether you see fixing rivets or not" — ranges in price from $375 a metre installed to about $550 a metre. "It's a very specialised job."

He recently clad a two-storey home in inner Melbourne for which no two panels were the same size. "Because it is such an organic material that changes with time, it looks so beautiful against architecture that may otherwise be stark and sterile."

He also made a $25,000 kennel for a dog that refused to use it until it was heavily insulated.

Weathering steel does get hot, he says, "but no hotter than a concrete surface". Most cladding work is well insulated and there is also a 25-millimetre barrier between the steel and the fixing surface to mitigate against unwanted heat transfer.

Another mainstay of his business is decorative gates, screens and light-boxes that can be laser-cut into all sorts of visually fascinating patterns.

"People want decorative screens to cover airconditioning units and hot water services or to screen out a nosy neighbour."

Le Roux has also fabricated free-standing plain panel uprights to become boundary fences that provide a stunningly earthy and oh-so-Aussie ochre backdrop to better define greenery.

But while the straightforward work that includes planter boxes is satisfying because it requires such painstaking skill in the welding and finishing tasks — "getting the welded edges to be invisible is critical" — the design and making of original free-standing sculptures is Le Roux's greatest joy.

The garden or feature pieces that he says replace the sometimes high-maintenance function of garden water features are done on commission, or from the inspiration he is always finding all around him.

"I've always loved shapes and forms and in the sculptures, I go through phases," he says.

"I started out working with organic shapes, inspired by pods and corals and plants. Now I'm playing with cubes. Now I'm a cubist."

Patting the surface of three vertically balancing cubes — "the hardest thing we've ever done" — Le Roux points out the way runnels of water dripping from one cube to the next are adding extra patterning to the piece.

"This material just keeps changing with the seasons."

While the weathering-steel effect is catching on in Australia, Le Roux also works with stainless steel and, recently, stone. He's just made a half-tonne baptismal font for a church.

For his varied sculptural commissions, he starts with a small cardboard maquette or model and fiddles around with it until the forms and balances are right. Then it becomes a piece so perfectly finished that the welding joins in the weathering steel are seamless.

After that, it's up to time and atmosphere to keep adding individuality to the pieces and the panels that he starts but the weather completes.

"It's such an amazing product. I'm surprised more people aren't using it," he says