This new series examines the role of details in contemporary architecture through the work of many emerging and established practitioners whose designs speak sensitively and energetically at the small scale. The collection presents these details in photographs, accompanied by working drawings, sketches, an introductory essay, and captions that explain how the elements were conceived and built.
The details presented are often beautiful telltales of a designer's thoughts, scaled to our eye, made physical to the touch of our hand. These crafted moments remind us that architecture can be a subtle and powerful forceplayed out in some cases by evoking historical motifs, in others by radical experimentation with new materials. But more than a simple catalogue of ideas, these details are ultimately shown as individual expressions of discovery, gestures of delight or severity, of beauty and clarity. They are meaningful indications of the architect's presencemore than all else, willful signs that the true craft of design is alive and well.
Materials examines a wide spectrum of architectural palettes, from traditional materials used in innovative ways to the testing of new substances that alter the meaning of historic forms. The images demonstrate the use of single materials throughout a space as well as the joining of multiple components in one place. These details exemplify projects in which patterns, textures, color, and surface qualities contribute ingeniously to the character of the architecture around them.
Oscar Riera Ojeda is an editor and designer who practices worldwide from his Boston and New York offices. He is vice-director of the Spanish magazine Casas Internacional and is the creator of a number of architectural books for Rockport Publishers, including the Single Building series, Ten Houses, Contemporary World Architects, Architecture in Detail, and Art and Architecture. Mark Pasnick works for Machado and Silvetti Associates in Boston, where he became Associate in 2000. He regularly teaches design studios and history courses at Northeastern University and was member of the editorial staff of Assemblage from 1995 through 2000. His most recent writing appears in Architectural Record and the Cornell Journal of Architecture. Both live in Massachusetts, USA. Paul Warchol's work has been published in magazines around the world. He has recently been the focus of a series of books on architecture and design by Italian publisher Edizione L'Archivolto. He had been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad in both group and one-man exhibitions. He lives and works in New York City.
