For Kahn, gaps allow for the reading of sequence and dependency. The timber work of the Salk Institute is set off from the concrete hull in order to establish it as chronologically secondary.

continuing salk details...

chamfer on the concrete formwork gives you beautiful seam work.


scuppers run to channels set in the wall. nice flow.


and the scuppers ain't too bad lookin...

oh. and i also really like the detailing at the getty villa. it's quite nice... all the bronze work is really great.

i KNEW scarpa would be first as soon as i saw the title.

though the hall is a little heavy, i've always appreciated behren's use of a cascade of colored brick for the hoechst farbenwerke (home of a dye manufacturer):



the backlit panels lining the great hall at the center of heinrich tessenow's school for rhythmic dance:


"...they would have eventually wandered on into the vast, rectangular, main hall, where they would have been met by a startling, glowing light. Never before had these visitors entered a room like this, which was not artificially lit, but rather acted itself as a lighting body, diffusing light equally in every direction, recreating what seemed like natural daylight. Described as 'objective, neither cold, nor hot, but rather of a marvelously living consistency … with an imperceptible dynamism' (Appia 206; original), this light created a 'milky ambiance' or 'elysian atmosphere', and caused visitors to feel as if the 'fresh air of the Greek sky [had been technically transposed] into the northern night'." - tamara levitz, mcgill u.

and otto wagner's use of visible fasteners for stone, here at st leopold at am steinhof:


adapted by josef kleihues at his museum of ancient history/archaeology in frankfort:

agfa80 --- thank's for this initiative ; a tread like this will be much more productive than any smalltalk endless five word reply poll.

I am looking forwerds to a daily dose of spetacular Details.

This is a place where I plan to be visiting in early June as part of the,
"Euine Fay Jones 2007 kebyar Celebration" June 8-10, Fayettevile,
Arkansas. Now this man really knew how to detail things.

i think the details you talk and wonder least about, are the best in the end... detailing for detailing really seems out of this world (not only economically) i always prefer the simplest technical solution, from which can emanate quiet some beauty...
this is allready reinforced by the fact that until now only historic buildings (or lookalikes) showed up here
detail is a bit like the iconic building, can be nice if there is the money, but is not the solution...

to me the details are about taking pride enough to spend more time/money/effort on a project. I don't think that it matters what type of architectural style it is, except that there may be more oppurtunities for detail in a historical type building.

I like this thread :)

Steven, I don't think I've ever seen that Tessenow building before! I'm off to look it up.

In that case, the detailing appears to be about dissolving the materials in the service of a specular effect. Perhaps there is a relationship between this aesthetics of disappearance and brown666's proposition about details that disappear and emanate a quiet beauty?

I think this is a nice piece of contemporary detailing, although it's showing off again:







Philip Beesley's 'Orgone Reef' (anyone seen this in person?)

some of these examples make me wonder where, and if, we make a distinction between the detail and the ornament.

i agree. sometimes details are not about the act of standing out but of receeding. i like scarpa, have several monographs of his work in fact, steve holl too, but you know sometimes it can be a bit tedious, that over-refined approach. maybe is why i like japan. pretention is here in spades but so is simplicity and willingness to be ugly, to just hang loose..

for uber refined detailing of the former sort no one does it better than takenaka corporation. beautiful and well though out and perfect...also perfectly boring and soulless, to my eyes...but you can't have everything.

just to be perverse i have to admit i prefer rem's detailing over most contemporary stuff...so many great details in works like this

I think that if a detail is designed to recede, it must be receding in order to make something else visible: some bigger picture, or everyday life, or something like that. Details recede in order to bring something else into view.

That pottery detail is beautiful, jump. But I never thought much of Koolhaas's details.

detail/ornament aren't mutually exclusive. ornament can be a detail as much as a material joint can be a detail. some of the details a lot of us admire most are when material joints or connections are raised to the level of ornament, i.e., when the ornament is integral to the architecture. but a purely applied ornament can also be a detail, right? what would you get out of making a distinction, ice9? (not snarking, just wondering where the comment is coming from.)

well, i'm not sure.
i, also, don't think that the detail and the ornament are mutually exclusive. but, i bet that if we were to do some research we would find that the detail, as we now understand it, grew out of a modernist tradition that was trying to do away with ornament.
a simple example: a wall hitting a ceiling. in an ornamental tradition, the connection of the two planes may be obscured (while celebrated) through the application of some sort of molding. in some modernist traditions, the connection of the two planes may be expressed through a shadow gap or a reveal. these days, i think we're all sophisticated enough to know that the shadow gap isn't really any less ornamental than the molding, but they nevertheless represent two distinct traditions. no?
but these days, the ornament is back with a fury. so, i think its a distinction worth thinking about...

agfa8x,

i know, very few people here have much respect for the koolhaasian approach to detailing. i am a bit non-plused to understand why...his projects are certainly as carefully built as scarpa's work, and in many ways as beautiful...though not as maudlin, to be blunt...which is what i appreciate in the work.

this is still one of my favs:


mostly for the interesting way he shows which members are tension and which compression. it isn't atmospherically surreal, just smart.

i also quite like this one, by wiel arets, where the pattern printed on the glass is also used with the concrete formwork to create a revealed surface:


it is maybe coincidence that these are both dutch examples...maybe not.

steven is correct there is no reason to be worried that details are ornamental and vice versa...

personally i am right now very interested in how material choices affects detailing. we are now doing a small house in tokyo where every other material decision seems to affect how we go about detailing the entire building...changing the aesthetics dramatically and how we even deal with proportions, structure, and cetera...it is a fun experience this way...

the beef with koolhaas details has a lot to do with material choices, workmanship, and longevity. probably part of the circumstances of getting their work built and who is chosen as the architect of record, who builds, etc. the kunsthal has some wretched workmanship issues despite having some kool details. the iit student center has been attacked since day 1 for the cheapness of its materials.

i ride the fence. the projects i've seen have some great moments, but some of the failures, especially on university buildings which are expected to have long lives, are pretty inexcusable - whoever may be responsible.

that wiel arets library, on the other hand, is sublime. it appeared to be as beautifully made as it was beautifully resolved. i guess we'll see (still so new).

yeah i get that steven.

the buildings i have seen by rem definitely had some problems with longevity...but to be honest i think that is an issue for our times and not one that can be directed to OMA in isolation.

i wonder if the ease of acceptance of wiel's work over rems is not the detailing but the ease of comprehension?

This is a beautiful detail. I found it on flickr - it's from a bank on the Strand in London, apparently. Tactile and yet unavailable.

I'm not sure that trying to separate ornament from detail is helpful. There would certainly be degrees of ornamentality within detailing, though.

Are these details ornamental?

(and I love that Arets library, too)

i'm 50/50 on OMA/rem's details. especially as to what details they actually do v. the project architect that finishes it...

jump, i'm pretty enthralled with aret's work.


i also really dug the allston branch library

Marco Frascari:
"In Architecture, feeling a handrail, walking up steps or between walls, turning a corner, and noting the sitting of a beam in a wall, are coordinated elements of visual and tactile sensations. The location of these details gives birth to the conventions that tie a meaning to a perception. The conception of the architectural space achieved in this way is the result of the association of the visual images of details, gained through the phenomenon of indirect vision, with the geometrical proposition embodied in forms, dimensions, and location, developed by touching and walking through buildings."

Great thread, keep it going.

agfa-
a great article... an even greater teacher.

also from t"he Tell-The-Tale detail":

"In the details are the possibilities of innovation and invention, and it is through these that architects give harmony to the most uncommon and difficult or disorderly environments generated by a culture."

"Architecture is an art because it is interested not only in the original need of shelter but also in putting togethor spaces and materials in a meaningful manner. This occurs through formal and actual joints. The joint, that is the fertile detail, is the place where both the construction and construing of architecture take place"

I love those slits in the Baths at Vals...

some detailing over at this side of the ball

Wow mau, that middle picture looks liquid.

Yes, wonderful thread, thanks for starting it agfa8x - I've been to busy to contribute but will eventually.

some of the most awe inspiring details i've ever seen were at Teohotican in Mexico... and the level of craftsmanship were consist whether it was a pebble or a 20 ton rock

i'll see if i can scan one of my slides from my trip 97

forgive my spelling - that should be Teotihuacán

I must add to the debate of ornament versus just being a beautiful tectonic relationship (meeting of plane and surface, surface and surface, plane and plane, etc etc)

The Mexican details are on the most part integrative parts of a larger system, but articulated with references to nature. Some however like the "frogs" - smaller stones placed in the grout for the boulders, were agitated with tiny indentations to allow for greater bonding...but alas its beauty is revealed when sections become exposed to the sun, creating shadows or spots to give macro to the building's massive size

I like Joints. I think details shines at collisions and intersections, even the more mundane places.

Jointing is often a matter of patterning.

collision of materials

gaudi's badass masons...

James Turrell's House of Light. This would be an example of a specular detail. Turrell almost literally 'clips the blue from the sky'.