Nine inch details: Exploring the architectural potential of post assembly details

Abstract

The smallest of the elements and components of architecture is the detail, an architectural phenomenon and a masterful storyteller. The detail and detailing has typically been something which is carefully designed as part of the general concept or expression of architecture. As Kenneth Frampton once stated: ”Architecture is the art of making connections, and details are the points of connection between different elements of a building.”. The detail is often referred to as a joint due to its tectonic purpose. A point where different building elements come together, allowing for movement and structural stability. Further, details refer to specific elements of design and has similarities to the role of the ornament. An element with traditionally close ties to craftmanship. As Luis Kahn emphasizes: ”The joint is the beginning of ornament and that must be distinguished from decoration which is simply applied. Ornament is the adoration of the joint.” In mainstream practices of today, however, the detail seems to have lost much of Its significance. Due to strained economy, lack of attention and failed management processes, the detail is not a narrative guide of crafts and intention. Rather, it is the involuntary result of an industry that depends on and favors yield, standardization, outsourcing, and efficiency. A detail can be a clumsily folded sheet of metal, with imprecise cut edges, that covers the gap in a niche between an aluminium covered window frame and a thin layer of bricks on a facade. Or the different colored rivets that fasten a stainless sheet threshold in a doorframe. These kinds of details occur either within or in-between systems of products as they are being assembled on site. They occur to solve issues that arise post-assembly and are rarely designed by an architect, or worse, have been wholly missing from construction drawings and appear as an undesirable surprise for the architect.

This thesis does not aim to perpetuate the importance of the custom designed exquisite detail or the craftsmanship behind it. Rather, it attempts to see opportunities in how materials and joints are handled in contemporary architectural production by challenging both current and past procedures. It adopts mainstream and cynical production of architecture and its features and attempts to explore the potential. Can such architecture be nudged from ordinary and ugly to ordinary and interresting? This work embraces and subtly tweaks those standardized building products and the post-assembly details that cover the gaps between them. It exposes such products as general assembly solutions for practical problems no one wants to tackle and explores the design possibilities where most architects’ engagement seems to end. The thesis is conceived as a research through design project that critically investigates and creatively maps the multi-layered work processes and material handling of today’s building sites and mainstreem architecture. Through drawings and ligne claire graphics, the project explores the reconstructed reality of modern utility architecture and discloses the variegated results of post assembly. In addition, the work is based on hands-on drawing and model experiments involving both craft and products, as well as investigations of historical references and manipulation of contemporary examples and materials. This thesis deals with products and montage in an ambiguous way to emphasis the estethic vunerability in main stream architecture. Through form generation and models based on a standardized production machinery, the involuntary, sometimes absurd, added detail is exhibited and explored