Producing architecture

Abstract

It is said that good design is transparent. Time and time again, designers have stressed that the transparency of a building is in its detailing. As designers continue to take their designs to new limits, the importance of detailing has grown. Today, buildings are designed such that people from multi-disciplinary professions must form a team in order to be able to produce architecture that is holistically designed. The result is an intricately designed structure, the pieces of which work in the same way as the detailed design and manufacture of smaller scale products; such as the mobile phone (which today seems to act as an extension of one’s identity) and high-end vehicles. Looking into the design processes of product design and the methods of construction and detailing that architects have gone into, I would like to see if buildings have moved on from being designed as ‘buildings’ to being transformed into ‘products.’