Building Envelopes: An Integrated Strategy Ebook

Building Envelopes: An Integrated Strategy Ebook

Building Envelopes: An Integrated Strategy Ebook

Ebook details:

Title: Building Envelopes: An Integrated Strategy (Architecture Briefs)

Author: Jenny Lovell

Publisher:

Edition: ۱ edition

Langage: English

Format: ebook  Pdf

Size: ۴۲ Mb

pages: ۱۵۲

Year: ۲۰۱۰

ISBN: ۱۱۳۸۹۶۴۴۲۵

The last century saw a radical change in the nature
of the building envelope. Rather than being considered
as part of the structure—a single, homogeneous
plane perforated by openings—it began to be
conceived instead as a separate layer that, relieved
of any structural responsibility, could fulfill the sole
function of protecting the interior of the building
from the vagaries of the outside world.
At first sight, this separation of a building’s
structure from its envelope might be expected to
be liberating, freeing the contemporary architect
to invent new and radical solutions to the problems
of creating building enclosure. But the reality, as
this book makes clear, is at once more complex
and more interesting. The design of the building
envelope has to address a wide spectrum of issues,
ranging from the technical performance of the
individual materials and the nature of their assembly
to the visual appearance and propriety of the
resulting building form.
In setting down and explaining these various
issues in this book, Jenny Lovell draws them
fully into the design process, offering the prospect
of generating architectural form and meaning
directly from their resolution. For this to happen, an
approach is required that fuses practical considerations
of how a building works—how it maintains the
physical comfort of its occupants—with aesthetic, or
cultural, considerations of how a building looks—how
it is assimilated into its context and what it represents.
“Poetic sensibility integrated with pragmatic
application,” as Lovell describes it.