Surface Consciousness (Architectural Design) Book

'Surface' is the current buzz word in contemporary architecture. The most exciting and cutting edge architectural projects, such as Foreign Office Architect's Yokohama Port Terminal and Mark Goulthorpe's Aegis Hyposurface, are being carefully conceptualised and crafted to make surface their main focus. Rather than seeking to define a new movement, this title demonstrates that for architecture surface is now far more than a 'crust' or 'decorative strategy', setting up meaningful relationships between contemporary methods of visioning, making and fabricating. Prompted by digital advancements, surface consciousness represents a whole new way of conceiving tectonic form. Whereas classical and even Modernist architecture polarised ornament and structure, contemporary techniques allow for an integration and blurring of the inside with the outside. In architectural terms this enables an unparalled freedom of expression and form. This is apparent in the diversity of the work featured here by those such as Herzog & de Meuron, Michael Trudgeon, Ashton Raggatt McDougall(ARM) and Lyons, in which a new delight emerges in patterning and texture as well as the sensuous and the ornamental.

Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM)
Mark Burry
Bernard Cache
dECOi
Herzog & de Meuron
Horst Kiechle
Lyons
Minifie/Nixon
Julieanna Preston
Michael Trudgeon
Wood/Marsh