Detail in Process (AsBuilt)

What separates good architecture from great architecture? The difference lies in the details. The way an architect chooses to treat architectural detailingscreens and walls, doors and windows, roofs, bridges, and stairscan transform the merely ordinary into the extraordinary. Detail in Process, the second volume in the new AsBuilt series, features twenty-five awe-inspiring projects characterized by an unusual synthesis of aesthetics and materials: the sunshade at Morphosis’s Student Recreation Center in Cincinnati; the embossed and perforated copper skin of Herzog & de Meuron’s de Young Museum in San Francisco; the handrails at Mir Rivera Architects’, Lake Austin Footbridge in Austin; the stairs at Heatherwick Studio’s, Longchamp Store in New York City; plus twenty more.

Editors Christine Killory and Ren Davids have collected the best work of the past two years including new buildings by some of today’s most daring and detail-obsessed architects: Norman Foster, James Carpenter, John Ronan, Renzo Piano, Marmol Radziner, Tadao Ando, Steven Holl, Jean Nouvel, David Chipperfield, and SANAA. Comprehensively documented, Detail in Process includes the plans, details, and large-scale sections needed to appreciate the innovative ways these architects have responded to complicated design problems.

Review

Rather than offer broad overviews, the authors more often than not zero in on one feature–e.g., an upscale boutique’s surreal, gravity-defying grand staircase–for a detailed look at material, processes, and design evolution. This volume, along with the series’s first volume by these authors, Details in Contemporary Architecture, is highly recommended for practicing architects, engineers, and students in these fields. — Library Journal, June 1, 2008

About the Author

Christine Killory is a principal of Davids Killory Architecture in San Francisco.

René Davids is an associate professor of architecture at University of California, Berkeley, and a principal of Davids Killory Architecture.