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Despite the exaggerated news of the untimely 'death of the detail' by Greg Lynn, the architectural detail is now more lifelike and active than ever before. In this era of digital design and production technologies, new materials, parametrics, building information modeling (BIM), augmented realities and the nano-bio-information-computation consilience, the detail is now an increasingly vital force in architecture. Though such digitally designed and produced details are diminishing in size to the molecular and nano levels, they are increasingly becoming more complex, multi-functional, high performance and self-replicating. Far from being a non-essential and final finish, this new type of highly evolved high-tech detail is rapidly becoming the indispensable and critical core, the (sometimes iconic) DNA of an innovative new species of built environmental form that is spawning in scale and prominence, across product, interior, urban and landscape design. This issue of AD re-examines the history, theories and design of the world's most significant spatial details, and explores their innovative potentials and possibilities for the future of architecture.
Contributors include: Rachel Armstrong, Nic Clear, Edward Ford, Dennis Shelden, Skylar Tibbits.
Featured architects: Ben van Berkel, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Peter Macapia, Carlo Ratti, Philippe Rahm, Patrik Schumacher, Neil Spiller.
List of contents
EDITORIAL 5
Helen Castle ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITOR 6
Mark Garcia SPOTLIGHT 8
Visual highlights of the issue INTRODUCTION: Histories, Theories and Futures of the Details of Architecture14
Mark Garcia The Grand Work of Fiction: The Detail as Narrative 26
Edward Ford Details Around the Corner 36
Christian Schittich Tectonic Articulation: Making Engineering Logics Speak 44
Patrik Schumacher Future Details of UNStudio Architectures: An Interview with Ben van Berkel 52
Mark Garcia Close Up 62
Hernan Diaz Alonso Un détail de ce qui change: Function of a Function 68
Peter Macapia Future Landscapes of Spatial Details: An Interview with Philippe Rahm 78
Mark Garcia The Rise of the 'Invisible Detail': Ubiquitous Computing and the 'Minimum Meaningful' 86
Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel Information, Complexity and the Detail 92
Dennis R Shelden Growing Details 98
David Benjamin, Danil Nagy and Carlos Olguin DNA disPlay: Programmable Bioactive Materials Using CNC Patterning 104
Skylar Tibbits, Lina Kara'in, Joseph Schaeffer, Helena de Puig, Jose Gomez-Marquez and Anna Young The Post-Epistemological Details of Oceanic Ontologies 112
Rachel Armstrong Detailing the Walled Garden for Lebbeus 118
Neil Spiller The Gold Mine: A Ludic Architecture 128
Nic Clear COUNTERPOINT: The Architectural Detail and the Fear of Commitment 134
Mark Burry CONTRIBUTOR 142
About the author
Mark Garcia is the academic coordinator in the Department of Architecture at the RCA. He has lectured on the RCA-wide "MPhil/PhD Research Methods Course" and teaches spatial design theory and design research methodologies. His current projects focus on the relationships between architectural/urban design and fashion/textile design, and on contemporary spatial design theory and the visualisation of art and design research methodologies, the architectural diagram and sketch, and on play, games and toys in architecture.
Summary
Despite the exaggerated news of the untimely 'death of the detail' by Greg Lynn, the architectural detail is now more lifelike and active than ever before.
