Surface architecture / David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leatherbarrow, David.

Contributor:

Mostafavi, Mohsen.

EBSCOhost.

Martin and Margy Meyerson Endowment Fund for the Built Environment.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture.

Architecture and technology.

Materials--Appearance.

Materials.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (264 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2002.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Visually, many contemporary buildings either reflect their systems of production or recollect earlier styles and motifs. This division between production and representation is in some ways an extension of that between modernity and tradition. In this book David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi explore ways design can take advantage of production methods so that architecture neither ignores nor is dominated by technology.

Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi examine the theoretical and practical isolation of the building surface as the subject of architectural design. The autonomy of the surface, the modernist "free facade," presumed a distinction between the structural and nonstructural elements of the building, between the frame and the cladding. Once the skin of the building became independent of its structure, it could just as well hang like a curtain, or like clothing. But the properties of a building's surface-whether made of concrete, metal, glass, or other materials-are not merely superficial; they construct the spatial effects by which architecture communicates. Through its surfaces a building declares both its autonomy and its participation in its surroundings.

In tracing the handling of this surface, the authors examine both contemporary buildings and those of the recent past. Architects discussed include Albert Kahn, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Alison and Peter Smithson, Alejandro de la Sota, Robert Venturi, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.

Contents:

1. Introduction: Why surface architecture?

2. Framing containment

Framing the face

Monumental volumes

Representation and production

Minimal surfaces

The factory

Total containment

Chicago frames

3. Window/wall

De-vignolization

Viewing the landscape

Opacity and transparency

The oblique

The painted view

The depth of the window wall

Taking stock

Border adjustments

Vertical and horizontal

Misalignments

Cladding as clothing

Windows and/as walls

4. The appearance of covering

Atectonic fabrications: Sliding surfaces

Masking and revealing

Symbolic surfaces

The impressed facade: Tattoo

Surface appliqué

Impressions

Planarity and surface impressions

Aesthetics in an industrial age

Ideality of the constructed fact

Architecture for industry

Factory-made

5. Adjusting standards

The light of industry

Modern appearances and practicality

Prefabrication and personality

Architecture en série

Fabrication processes

"For many years I wore the leather apron"

6. Premade-remade

Open and closed systems of construction

Brutal facts of building

Facts of building and of life

Invention and limited means

Chance construction

As found

Formlessness

7. Technique and appearance: The task of the present

Distraction

Modern building and historical memory

Representation and nonrepresentation

Building images

Postscript

Technique

Appropriation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-255) and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ipswich, MA Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Martin and Margy Meyerson Endowment Fund for the Built Environment.

ISBN:

9780262278034

0262278030

Publisher Number:

99984025958

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.