THE GRAND WORK OF FICTION: THE DETAIL AS NARRATIVE

摘要

I am not certain what Rem Koolhaas meant when he said that 'how the roof meets the wall can never be an idea'. Given the context in which he said it, defending the detailing of his Rotterdam Kunsthal (1992) by criticising Carlo Scarpa, I think he meant that the junction should not be an object, that the meeting of these two parts should not generate a third. Much of the detailing in the Kunsthal could be called collaged, or rather a collision. Two surfaces of different materials simply run into one another. To Koolhaas, the modern joint is 'clamped, folded, glued, or fused'. He wrote: 'detailing ... is now a transient coupling waiting to be undone, unscrewed, a temporary embrace with a high possibility of separation ... the abrupt end of a system'.