The Honest Detail
The Honest Detail
Strategic Details in Contemporary Design
Under Senior Instructor Ken Renaud
Scientific yet precarious; beautiful yet deficient. Details are imperfect, infinite, and unavoidable, although concealable, aesthetic connectors between the designer’s vision and his work by both artificial and/or natural means. These minute aspects of the design process have been defined by their maker; whether designer, architect, engineer, or inventor, since the foundation of primitive design.
This understanding of what a detail is and what impact it has on its devise has evidently evolved and is continually changing throughout time. What were once “on the spot” aesthetic additions to the facades of mid evil structure, details have evolved into complex mathematical representations of fractals and today represent the core meaning of the designers conceptions, whether hidden or celebrated. Of course, to the majority of users, the architectural detail is one of constructional logic and systematic technicality and not of contextual connotation. This is an ill-fated reality throughout the common populace. It is important to understand architectural details contextually rather than merely technically because of the phenomenology which lies in many of the details implicated into these works. The experiences and emotions created by details portray the designer’s conceptual ideals as well as control the true appreciation of the work in the long run. Whether architectural, industrial, or technical design; details are ever present facets of the designer’s work which can surprisingly energize and effectively maintain the underlying integrity of the work.
Norman Foster’s Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts contains a complex system of environmental control through an honest route of expression. Foster utilizes the figurative value of exterior, visible structure and uninterrupted programme to achieve the flexibility and translucence needed in such a venue.
In order for Foster to achieve his architectonic conception of uninterrupted space, lightness, and transparency; Foster implemented a system of welded steel members and panels. This system came together to form 37 portal frames which allowed for an unimpeded space of 435 feet. Rather than covering up this unique network of rectangular grids and portal frame elements, Foster left much of the network visible.
This system plays a major role in the Centre’s program in itself. Foster integrated the galleries lighting system to into the infrastructure, allowing for limitless options when lighting the works on display.
The system of portal frames connects to a cladding system which drapes the Centre’s longer facades. This cladding system is designed with different qualities, whether opaque/transparent glass or metal grilles, to keep energy consumption to a minimum. This connection between framework and cladding is illustrated in the detail shown.
Sainsbury Center for the Visual Arts
Norwich, Norfolk, UK / 1974 - 1978, Foster + Partners, Photos © Xavier de Jauréguiberry
Recreated Detail