An important lesson that can change the way you think, design and detail a building.
Through working on architectural and landscape design projects, I can safely say that detailing is not something that is though of at the beginning of a project. We are taught to free our mind to allow our creative juice's to flow freely, to conceptualise, adapt and rethink all that exists!!
Well, one massive problem with that. Once those juice's have flowed from the dark mysterious corners of your mind and been transformed into something truly unique, we have to figure out how we are going to put that together.
Greater weight MUST be given to the details, its these details that create a building and ensures it thrives.
Now, I'm not one for placing rules and restrains on creativity and innovation, but I am all for constraints, be these things like physics, site restraints, planning polices and the clients requirements to mention a few.
Some of these restraints we can control and some we cannot. A simple and sure way of ensuring that the end product will meet demands such as energy performance, planning polices and the clients requirements would be to start with the detail in mind.
Think about it, energy performance comes from how well we detail a building, meeting local planning polices can include materiality choices and adding into the mix what the client requires and we have a starting point.
For a building to be successful, we must ensure its fit for the purpose it was intended. Buildings are deemed unfit once defects are found, these defects are usually a failure in the drawings and construction of these details that make up that building, not the artistic conceptual design. Greater weight MUST be given to the details, its these details that create a building and ensures it thrives.
For you next project I suggest that you consider setting yourself the task of thinking about what you what to achieve from the design and how you might achieve this before you start designing, maybe sketch a few details out and get creative with the detailing and how that will guide and allow you to create impressive, innovative designs that are not only unique and beautiful, but out perform those of poor design.