HISTORIES, THEORIES AND FUTURES OF THE DETAILS OF ARCHITECTURE

摘要

In 1906, the architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage announced the death of the joint, and nearly a century later Greg Lynn proclaimed the death of the detail.1 But a year ago, one of the smallest architectural details was discovered within one of the largest, most expensive, specialised and most detailed works of architecture ever made - though it has never been acknowledged as architectural. This neglect by architecture of the Higgs boson particle itself reflects a history of poor critical and theoretical writings on the architectural detail. For while sometimes acknowledged to be important to architecture as a whole, the detail has not yet been fully explored for the many more design opportunities it offers us in the future. We therefore need to reassemble the histories and theories of architecture to redesign the detail into the 21st century and beyond.