The Role of the Detail in the Design Process

This week’s readings centered around architectural details and their importance in the design process. What is most interesting to me is that as interior designers, we are all overly concerned with details. Details are what make the spaces special to our clients. Yet here we are in week eleven of the semester and this is the first time we are talking about architectural details in a real, substantial way. Why is it that details are so important in interior design but often overlooked when discussing architecture? Are details somehow less important in architecture than in interior design?  Up to this point in the semester, we have really delved into various aspects of architecture, and in the process we have studied so many different buildings. Despite the number of buildings we have researched, it seems like we have focused more on how a building relates to its location, what it says about the company/country who built it, how it affects the local economy, etc than on any specific detail of said buildings. For example, in class we have discussed certain buildings and their facades, though we have not yet gone into as much detail as in the readings this week, in particular Zaero-Polo’s “Patterns, Fabrics, Prototypes, Tessellations.”

               

In “Reading Details: Caruso St. John and the Poetic Intent of Construction Documents” we were able to learn more from an architect’s perspective about the importance of detail in the building process. The architects at Caruso St. John were insistent upon using a particular type of joint to the builders on the project, as that joint was integral to the “poetic intent” of the entire project. This is the first we’ve really heard about just how important the smallest of details can be in conveying the overall intended meaning or concept of a building project. We typically discuss the overall intent of the building or its meaning, but without getting as granular as talking about how a detail has impacted it. After reading this essay, it made me want to re-visit a lot of the buildings we have discussed earlier this semester. It would be a really interesting exercise to go back to the Burj Khalifa or Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, for example, and re-examine them to determine which details were integral to conveying the essence of the project – which detail, if changed, would have altered the project entirely. Digging into a few additional case studies about the importance of details wouldn’t hurt, as we are a group of students who are particularly interested in how one seemingly small thing can totally change the feeling of a space or project.

I thought this week’s readings provided a valuable perspective on architecture. The selection serves as a good reminder for us to stop and look at the details of architecture, rather than simply the silhouette or the height. The details give us the chance to understand the intent of the project in a deeper sense.