Materials

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said today it has signed an agreement with two subsidiaries of Du Pont de Nemours and Co. for joint development of materials for use by the electronics industry. Matsushita said the Master Task Agreement was signed with Du Pont Japan Ltd. and Du Pont de Nemours International SA in Geneva.

You can tell a lot about the overall quality of a builder by judging his subcontractors. Those are the folks actually doing the work. Visit other houses under construction in the same phase or tract and look for these clues: Supervision: Is there a supervisor or foreman on the site? Are the subs working unsupervised? Does the supervisor just drive by from time to time and wave from his truck?

An Alaska investor has purchased 9.3% of Pay 'N' Pak Stores' prime non-voting preferred shares, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Maurice L. Carlson, who operates out of Anchorage, said he bought the shares in the Kent, Wash.-based building materials company as an investment.

CalMat Co.: The Los Angeles-based building materials and property development company reported profit of $13 million for the quarter ended March 31, down 8% from a year ago. Revenue totaled $153 million, down 1%. The results reflected the negative effects of unusually cold and wet weather in the period, higher interest rates and a softening in the market for industrial property and office space in Phoenix and San Diego.

The Jackson-Hinds Library System of Jackson, Mississippi, opened the Eudora Welty Room June 1. The room will contain published works of people either born in the state or who lived at least one year in Mississippi. Materials are now being received from authors themselves or from others who might donate them. For more information, contact: HARIETT D. KUYKENDALL 4619 Culleywood Road Jackson, MS 39211

Youths in a Santiago slum Thursday stormed a truck carrying food, clothes, toys and building materials before they could be distributed by Chilean church officials as ransom for an army colonel kidnaped by leftist guerrillas. The Roman Catholic Church began distributing over 150 tons of food and other materials to 13 slum districts of the capital as ransom for Col. Carlos Carreno, who was kidnaped nearly three months ago by the Manuel Rodgriguez Patriotic Front.

Wood, steel, glass. Ho-hum. Materials deployed for the exterior of homes are growing increasingly adventurous. We asked Material ConneXion, an international consulting service that advises designers, companies and government agencies on design and construction, to explain some of the newest products to be used in residential projects. Emerging exterior materials include: La Terre finishing plaster : This plaster incorporates waste materials, including ground recycled concrete from old construction.

Because of the villainy of the times those with wealth in 7th Century China had their homes and their gardens designed to be hidden from public view and, hopefully, from plunder. A favored land form for these complexes was a bowl, in which for security there would be limited access. At the same time there would be maximum opportunities for a variety of perspectives which would provide allusions of greater size.

The Placentia remodelers ("This House Has a New Heart," Pardon Our Dust, Sept. 7) made some serious errors in judgment, and by printing this article with no caveats, you gave these mistakes your stamp of acceptability. It's hard to believe that someone could call these homeowners up, come out and get them to sign a contract without their doing any checking. They could at least have checked the contractor's references and found out what kind of work he did to see if it was what they wanted.