In Detail: Building skins -- concepts, layers, materials. (Thin Skin).Edited by Christian Schittich. Basel: Birkhauser. 2001. [euro]58 Although beautifully presented, this book falls somewhat between a text-book on light-weight cladding The plastic or glass sheath that is fused to and surrounds the core of an optical fiber. The cladding's mirror-like coating keeps the light waves reflected inside the core. The cladding is covered with a protective outer jacket. See fiber optics glossary. and a good architectural magazine with some recent fine examples of building skins. Predictably these include Moneo at San Sebastian, Eden Centre, Delft Delft (dĕlft), city (1994 pop. 91,941), South Holland prov., W Netherlands. It has varied industries and is noted for its ceramics (china, tiles, and pottery) known as delftware. Founded in the 11th cent. Library and others. Zumthor at Bregenz is on the front cover but not in the case studies. This magazine format has the disadvantage that the buildings are described as more than their cladding with the result that the technical information regarding their fixing and jointing and detailed specifications of the materials used are difficult to interpret from the limited information given. Detailed drawings are normally 1:20 or 1:10 but like Detail magazine, from where the layout has been borrowed, they can only be regarded as generic to give general layout of the parts of the assembly with no guidance towards their source or the manufacturers involved. Surprisingly for a German publication, the first more theoretical part, three essays by Schittich, Lang and Krippner, makes no mention of recent work being carried out by Jan Wurm and others at Aachen shown in Konstruktiver Glasbau 2, where the possibility to use treatment of the glass surface and shading See Phong shading, Gouraud shading, flat shading and programmable shading. devices as part of the overall structural performance of the assembly is described. Treatment of the glass using fritting frit n. 1. The fused or partially fused materials used in making glass. 2. A vitreous substance used in making porcelain, glazes, or enamels. tr.v. , silk screening or interlayers does not have to be just decoration as Schittich suggests. The need for environmental control and perhaps less obsession with transparency may lead us into better development of kinetic kinetic /ki·net·ic/ (ki-net´ik) pertaining to or producing motion. ki·net·ic adj. Of, relating to, or produced by motion. kinetic pertaining to or producing motion. facades and combinations of the physical and structural properties of lightweight cladding which this book might have been expected to predict. There are some beautiful examples of such an approach buried bur·y tr.v. bur·ied, bur·y·ing, bur·ies 1. To place in the ground: bury a bone. 2. a. To place (a corpse) in a grave, a tomb, or the sea; inter. b. in the book, chiefly von Gerkan & Marg's double glazed glaze n. 1. A thin smooth shiny coating. 2. A thin glassy coating of ice. 3. a. A coating of colored, opaque, or transparent material applied to ceramics before firing. b. 'modern relic' panels at Volkenrode (originally at Hanover), summer space by Johl, Jozwiak, Ruppel, Berlin, and Behnisch's roof for the swimming pool at Bad Elster. Maybe for this reason alone the book is worth buying. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion