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.
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