FUTURE DETAILS OF UNSTUDIO ARCHITECTURES: AN INTERVIEW WITH BEN VAN BERKEL

摘要

UNStudio are known for the complex and non-standard morphologies of both their buildings and their details. Their architectures are informed by a range of theoretical, material and technical research from an unprecedented breadth of disciplines including the arts, business and management, science and industry. Co-founder and principal Ben van Berkel's research project into the detail was first documented in his essay 'Storing the Detail' in the 1994 publication Mobile Forces} There, he and his co-author Caroline Bos confronted the seeming lack of adequate architectural theorisation of the detail, complaining that 'it is one of those shameful "facts of life" that get swept under the carpet... why has there been no room for the detail in any architectural discourse for several decades?'Manifesto-like, the essay continued: 'It has become essential to define it anew. Its classical meaning, as a part of the whole, as articulation, has become obsolete ... but that the notion of articulation has been abandoned too, comes as a shock ... That's why detail has ended up abruptly in a black hole; architecture itself denies its ability to exist.'