Surface Architecture Summary By David Leatherbarrow, Mohsen Mostafavi



Surface Architecture Summary By David Leatherbarrow, Mohsen Mostafavi
Publisher: The MIT Press 2002-08-15 | 274 Pages | ISBN: 0262134071 | PDF | 13 MB

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 that design can take advantage of
production methods such that architecture is neither independent of nor
dominated by technology. Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi begin with the
theoretical and practical isolation of the building surface as the
subject of architectural design. The autonomy of the surface, the "free
facade," presumes 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.
The focus of the relationship between structure and skin is the
architectural surface. 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,
Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron. The properties of a building’s
surface--whether it is 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.

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