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Everything DETAIL publishes, opened up by topic — from sustainable construction and prefabrication to structural engineering, light and urban design. Each topic leads into the search, with the articles, projects, drawings and images tagged for it.

Sustainability & Resources

Building for a planet under pressure — material cycles, energy concepts and healthy interiors.

  • Town Hall in Newbern

    The Rural Studio in Newbern, a branch of the University of Alabama, has existed for more than 20 years. During this period, it has proved possible to implement more than 150 student projects in one of the poorest regions of the US. The students work locally in groups to define meaningful and, for the most part, socially committed, sustainable buildings, ultimately constructing these themselves, too. In addition to various 20K houses – simple, but fully developed homes costing no more than $20,000 – a number of communal schemes have been implemented.

  • Parliament of the German-Speaking Community in Eupen

    The German-speaking community of Belgium has its own government and parliament. The latter, founded in 1984, was in need of additional space, and as the new location, a stately structure was selected – a former sanatorium dating from the early 20th century and standing on a hill in park-like grounds. The existing building had to be completely refurbished and earlier additions removed. Among other things, new windows were inserted, an insulated slate roof was constructed, and a heating and cooling system was installed.

  2. Collegium Academicum Student Residence in Heidelberg
  4. Project documentation with detail drawingsHouse without Cement in Lower Bavaria

Construction & Materials

Structure, jointing and prefabrication — how buildings are put together, documented in detail.

  • L'Opéra Restaurant in Paris

    The Opéra Garnier has scarcely changed since its inauguration in 1875. The historical theatre has also managed to preserve its role in the social life of the city, despite the opening of a second opera house, the Opéra Bastille, in 1989. 

  • Discussion: Primitive Hut of the Future? Bionic Research Pavilion in Wood

    In the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s rallying cry was “Retour à la nature!” His quest for an ideal “natural state” – as rejection of the aristocratic excesses of the Rococo – led him not only to romanticise the “noble savage”, but also to imagine the origins of architecture in man’s first house – completely surrounded by nature and made exclusively of unprocessed natural materials. In his “Essai sur l’architecture”, Marc Antoine Laugier – a contemporary of Rousseau – included an image that to this very day most famously illustrates the “primitive hut”: a pitched roof with a gable of twigs and branches supported by the trunks of four trees.

  1. Museum of Historic Oberamteistrasse in Reutlingen
  2. University Building Limberlost Place in Toronto
  3. Timber Hybrid Highrise near Zurich
  4. KACST Innovation Tower in Riyadh

Planning & Design

From the digital tool to the budget — the decisions taken before anyone reaches the site.

  • Reports: Permeable Building Envelope of Stainless-steel Rings

    Since it was established 30 years ago, Kukje Gallery has become one of Seoul’s most important exhibition venues for South Korean and international art. In April 2012 their third gallery building in Sogyeok-dong – a neighbourhood with low-slung homes, cafés and boutiques north of the central business district – opened. In accordance with the art campus’s master plan, the architects placed the new six-metre-high cube next to the two existing galleries. Behind its concrete shell is an art space, lit from above, for exhibitions, performances and events. To retain the clear geometry of this White Cube inside the gallery, parts of the building were added to the four outer walls: a vestibule, an elevator, a building-services enclosure, and two stairs. A curved stair connects the art space to the two lower floors, where the lecture space, administration, retail space and storage are located. An exterior steel stair leads to the unsheltered roof terrace. Because the building form that resulted appeared too rigid to them, the architects developed a second skin that was to surround the building like fog. They built a number of models experimenting with elastic fabric and arrived at a custom-tailored, chain-mail skin of stainless-steel rings that spans from the roofline to the ground and is entirely wrinkle-free. The result is a building at once orthogonal and amorphous that, owing to its hazy exterior, retreats into the background, and in this manner is well integrated in the heterogeneous surroundings. The 510 000 interlocking rings were first cut out of 3.5 mm thick wire coils and then manually connected, welded together and smoothened. The two main challenges were first, to develop a computer model to define the precise position of each ring (this task was taken on by the architects and Front, an engineering firm specialising in facades); and second, to ensure that the mesh does not sag. Following a number of tests, the fifteen separate segments – fabricated by craftsmen in China and delivered to Seoul – were installed with great precision, and their seams are not visible. Rigid points of connection located in the ground and above the glazing and spring-loaded connections at the parapet guarantee the chain mail’s tight fit.

  • Reports: A Robotically Fabricated Pavilion Consisting of Glass Fibres and Carbon Fibres

    The translucent structure of the ICD/ITKE research pavilion, designed by the architectural faculty of the University of Stuttgart, stood on the campus from October 2012 to January 2013. From afar, the whitish glass-fibre surfaces – consisting of hyperbolic paraboloids – gleamed between the anthracite-coloured supports that touched the ground only at their tips. The structure was based on the exo-skeleton of a lobster. In collaboration with scientists at the University of Tübingen, the architectural students investigated the principles underlying the form and material make-up of this creature, then applied the information – with the aid of the Institute of Textile Technology and Process Engineering in Denkendorf – to new forms of architectural construction.

  1. Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi
  2. Health Kiosks in Thuringia

City & Landscape

Density, height and open space — architecture at the scale of the city.

  • Completed building November 2013

    Residential Tower in Munich

    Munich is booming. Abandoned railway tracks, former military sites and a limited number of industrial brownfields are the target of the city’s ambitious goal to create 7000 dwelling units per year. The Isarbelle Tower is also located on a redeveloped site formerly owned by Siemens in Obersendling.

  • Standard window with opaque turn sash and turn-and- tilt sash from exterior

    Technology: Residential Tower with Turn-and-tilt-lift Windows – Smooth Facade with Balcony Ambiance

    In designs for facades of residential buildings in city centres, conflicts of interest often arise. On the one hand, the residents want an adjoining outdoor space, and, with the prospect of greater demand and higher prices per square metre, it is in the investors’ interest to fulfil this desire. On the other hand, the cantilevers and cut-outs accompanying balconies and loggias disrupt the homogeneous appearance of the facade and the urban character of the city. In particular, most recently, with the increased popularity of residential high-rises, the question has arisen how to make generously dimensioned outdoor spaces available to the residents that can also be used when there are strong winds, inclement weather, or low temperatures. This past May in Zurich’s centre a new building complex including a 70 m high residential tower with punctuated facade was completed in which some of the windows can be completely opened, yet do not obstruct the living space. Such large-format turn-and-tilt-lift windows are electrically operated and open the living space toward the outdoors; they were employed in the residential tower “Löwenbräu Black” and give its occupants a spectacular view of the Swiss metropolis. The turn-and-tilt-lift window contributes to the perception of spaciousness, because all of the profiles are hidden from view.

  • Office Building in Seoul

    Within sight of the traditional Namdaemun Market, the oldest and largest market place in Seoul, since last July a slender office tower with a striking matt black facade has soared into the skies above the city. Despite its size the new, 64-metre-high new building by the Dutch architecture office Mecanoo responds sensitively to its built environment and central position in the historical core city.

  1. Highrise Slab Peterbos 9 in Anderlecht
  2. The Wave: Balconies as a Defining Design Element