| |
Materials
for Design, by Victoria Ballard Bell with Patrick Rand.
One of the most popular magazines
with architects is the aptly-named Detail,
as it presents detailed drawings alongside the typical professional
photography. This thoroughness to how ideas are translated
into buildings is also evident in this great book by Victoria
Ballard Bell with Patrick Rand, focused on five materials
used in much contemporary architecture. These five materials
(glass, concrete, wood, metals, plastics) comprise the book's
chapters and its way of categorizing the 60 buildings presented,
with each chapter giving a brief but thorough overview of
the material's natural properties, historical use in buildings,
design and other considerations. While geared to students,
the book is eminently appealing to practicing architects,
if not for these descriptions then the great projects presented.
While this book aims to give the
student a basic background in the materials and a way of
seeing how they are applied to buildings, in order to be
able to select the appropriate materials for a particular
design (a consideration all-too-frequently missing from
many studios that deal in the abstraction of computer models
or chip-board or bass wood physical models), it also shows
how the materials can be used in varied and creative ways.
A good example is the book's cover project, the Laminata
House by Kruunenberg
Van der Erve Architecten. Instead of using glass in
its typical role as a clear barrier in an opening, the architects
used it in this research project as walls and structure
by gluing together on site more than 10,000 sheets of pre-cut
glass. It's an amazing project that can only be accomplished
(at this time) as a research project (due to cost and time),
but it's definitely something that can influence how a student
or architect thinks about the material, in a manner different
from typical applications.
Criticisms of the book are few: The
selected projects (like most presentations of contemporary
architecture) have a Western focus, with most projects in
Europe, North America, Japan and Australia. This almost
total ignorance of a non-Western context excludes architects
like the late Geoffrey
Bawa in South Asia and Simón
Vélez in South America, whose ambitious constructions
with bamboo offer a great precedent for architects designing
sustainably, though here bamboo is limited to nARCHITECTS'
courtyard design
for PS1. Additionally, what could be considered the most
important part of each project -- the detailed drawings
-- are inconsistent, with some buildings featuring thorough
and easy-to-follow details, while others lack keys or a
level of graphic legibility that the reader deserves. This
is most likely due to the various contributions to the book
via architects who practice in different ways, and the lack
of free labor afforded by a design studio like Function
of Ornament, though future editions or volumes
(if any) should address the more deficient drawings. Lastly,
the relationship of the text to the drawings is sometimes
frustrated by the former mentioning an important design
element that is not documented by the latter.
Even with these criticisms, the book
is an excellent resource for the architect as well as the
student. With the importance of materials and material selection
going beyond the realm of effect to its impact on the local
and larger environment, the architect must always be considering
and reconsidering what buildings are made of. This book
helps the architect see the various applications of the
most popular materials, and gives the student a background
that enable them to recognize the importance of materials
and push them in a direction that is hopefully both creative
and responsible.
or 
|
