Surface Architecture

Visually, many contemporary buildings either reflect their systems of production orrecollect earlier styles and motifs. This division between production and representation is in someways an extension of that between modernity and tradition. In this book, David Leatherbarrow andMohsen Mostafavi explore ways that design can take advantage of production methods such thatarchitecture is neither independent of nor dominated by technology.Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi beginwith the theoretical and practical isolation of the building surface as the subject of architecturaldesign. The autonomy of the surface, the "free facade," presumes a distinction between thestructural and nonstructural elements of the building, between the frame and the cladding. Once theskin 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 architecturalsurface. In tracing the handling of this surface, the authors examine both contemporary buildingsand 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 deMeuron.The properties of a building's surface -- whether it is made of concrete, metal, glass, orother materials -- are not merely superficial; they construct the spatial effects by whicharchitecture communicates. Through its surfaces a building declares both its autonomy and itsparticipation in its surroundings.

Seth Bullock is founder and head of the Science and Engineering of Natural Systems (SENSe) Research Group at the University of Southampton. He is also Director of Southampton's new Institute for Complex Systems Simulation (ICSS).