By Graham Bizley
From 2004 – 2011, I produced the In Detail feature on architectural detailing for Building Design, a weekly journal for architects (now on-line). I covered more than 120 recently completed buildings, with a 3D drawing of each explaining the way it was constructed. It was a fantastic opportunity to study construction, a masterclass with a fantasy league of tutors. I collated these drawings into two books, Architecture In Detail volumes I & II, which were published by the Architectural Press.
Most of a practising architect’s experience of detailing comes from the projects on which they have worked, and it is hard-won knowledge, so any chance to learn from the experience of others is invaluable. For each project I tried to develop a drawing that conveys a depth of technical information while also capturing the spirit of the building, with the aim of showing how the means of construction shaped its character.
Every fortnight I sat down with a pile of drawings, site photos and sketches and in an hour or two tried to get my head around what a team of people might have spent years designing. I sketched out the details by hand as a way of processing the information. To draw something accurately you have to understand it, question what each component is doing, work out the relationship between the parts and the vision of the whole. To me these sketches are as interesting as the final drawings, wobbly but careful explorations of another architect’s thinking, how their ideas found resolution with the practicalities of the project. The examples below show this journey from initial sketch to finished drawing.
Grizedale Arts – Sutherland Hussey Architects
In our own practice, once we gain planning and listed building consent, the next stage is the technical design (RIBA Stage 4). Here we work out exactly how the building will be built. The output at the end of this stage is a set of working drawings that describe the works to potential contractors so they can price and then construct the building. To produce these drawings, hundreds, even thousands of decisions need to be made about which manufacturers, materials, products, fixings and finishes to specify. These decisions are partly made on practical grounds – the detail solution must do the job and comply with regulations, but we equally consider how potential solutions relate to the building as a whole. Clients are often unaware how critical this stage is.
Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza has described detailing as ‘bringing things into relation’, which I think captures the tentative nature of the process, trying components out in the system to see whether or not they find harmony. The choice of materials and the way they are assembled are not arbitrary. The designer is required to exercise value judgements, identifying what is required in a given situation and weighing up the likely effects of different choices.
So how do we make these choices? Why do we choose one thing over another?
In vernacular construction many of these decisions were already made. A house was built from the materials to hand, in ways evolved over generations. In a timber joint the actions of the maker are apparent, the marks of the tools attesting the human scale of the endeavour. We admire the unity of material, construction and form. The detailing and materials seem appropriate.
This measure of appropriateness seems to me what is often misjudged. There is no shortage of technical prowess for hire but there is a lack of control of how and when it is deployed. Just because something can be made to work does not mean it is necessarily desirable. Appropriateness can be considered in relation to the architectural intent of the proposal, its context and implementation. What presence should it have? What do we want people to feel as they experience it? What mood does it communicate? How energy efficient does it need to be? Are the materials suitable for their tasks? How will it grow old? Who is going to make it? How will it be procured? Do the constraints of the project allow it?
In determining the construction of an architectural work we have to deal with three levels of issues.
The first I would describe as the practicalities, issues such as waterproofing, thermal performance, accessibility, making the rooms the right size for their functions. Analysis of available materials and products, the regulations, and the specific context of a project will present some options for achieving the practical requirements.
The second is to do with to what extent structure, environmental performance and construction are expressed. In his book Studies in Tectonic Culture Kenneth Frampton argues that the presentation and representation of construction are essential to the phenomenological presence of an architectural work. Structural expression and honesty are also examined by Edward Ford in his two-volume study ‘The Details of Modern Architecture’. Ford painstakingly shows that although structural honesty was a tenet of many Modernists, few of their buildings ever achieved it. The environmental performance we now demand of building envelopes makes expressing a monolithic structure very difficult but that is not to say expression of construction can just be discarded as outmoded. Ford suggests that the most satisfying buildings are those that have a strong structural narrative, even if the storey is not entirely true. In our Dundon Passivhaus project for example, the posts around the outside are solid oak, whereas the house itself has a softwood timber frame. The oak posts represent the structure and tell a story, but they are not a literal explanation of the rest of the structure.
The third level is to do with emotional response. Architects make choices of which things are seen and which are not, what is exaggerated and what is played down based on what effect they are trying to achieve. Creating a particular atmosphere, mood or emotional response is in the end the point of architecture, the intent that raises it above mere building. The atmosphere of a space is determined by the physical properties and the sensory presence of the materials from which it is formed. It bears the character of the processes by which it was made and the way the construction was conceived in the mind of the designer. Buildings can be seen as metaphors for human emotion in the way they express their weight, react to light or change with the weather. Perhaps the buildings we like most are those with which we feel empathy.
For us, a knowledge of the specific circumstances of how a project will be realised is fundamental in the conception of the intent. Only through a deep understanding of materials and construction can the connection be made between intent and physical form.
