Detail 01/1961 - Prof. Giovanni Muzio [Diskussion]
Planning and execution are often too separate. Especially the compulsion to "rationalization" does not allow the details to mature at home. Type products and scheme designs counter the pursuit of risk mitigation. However, there is no good architecture without careful detailing.
A building initially exists only in the planning drawing as documentation of the architectural management of the task set. He only comes to life with the practical implementation of the draft. Architecture alone, the only one among the visual arts, requires the two phases of planning determined by a personality and their collective execution with the participation of many people.
The aim is that the architect himself gives as many instructions, dispositions and drawings as possible for all relevant details of the construction or at least fixes them in principle, from shell construction to all details of interior design.
In project implementation, his personality should be clearly and distinctly activated. The architectural details reveal, as it were, the alphabet, the dialect, the grammar of his mind, in them the whole thing manifests itself.
The planning can have special features and extend very significantly to the smallest details. This will apply in particular to buildings that serve a purpose that stands out from everyday life. In such cases, the artistic inspiration has its own solutions, which often require the architect and his employees to spend a lot of time and difficult elaborations, especially the details.
In many cases, however, it is the case today that the preparation and planning of a building on the one hand and the realization of the project on the other hand are largely separated from each other in the routine of everyday work. The compulsion to save and short construction times now usually have precedence over the requirements of architectural maturation. Nevertheless, in order to be at least reasonably sure, the architect often limits himself to using such detailed elements that are ready for application (whether from industrial series production or in the sense of schematic work). Often he only repeats types that are also introduced in similar buildings or he converts these or Execution methods a little off.
It is also the case: the material conditions and constructions, which are becoming increasingly difficult or confusing as a result of the strong differentiation in the techniques, can already make preliminary considerations and planning work more difficult. In addition, there are often hardly enough experienced experts left for non-chematic details, which in turn favors the tendency to compare the assembly of fixed and finished industrial products to the artisanal execution, even the Because of lower risk. . This severely limits the scope of individual detailed work, which really pursues the details for the best possible adaptation to the special circumstances. This is also evident in the whole way in which one usually proceeds in architectural offices today: almost always, the people working here are primarily concerned with achieving the goal as quickly and inexpensively as possible; far less energy is used to give the individual elements the best perfection and their own value conceivable.
Industry, for its part, meets this by unifying the types, by constantly using the possibilities offered in its production processes and by labor-saving processes. This results in habituations for construction practice, which lead further and further away from the really individually solved detail, although the imaginative application of finished or semi-finished products still leaves certain personal characterizations open.
However, all this does not change the main requirement of all thorough architectural work that materials and techniques not only fulfill technical and economic effects, but should always be used according to artistic principles. This requires a "more" beyond the routine, requires maturation time and the will to do so, even the truly
To strive for beautiful things.
That's why in our days, more than ever, among other things, a particularly careful study of the diverse detailed conditions and Possibilities and a vigilant comparative examination is necessary for everything that has already been done in this regard or what is or is made available to architects by the professions and industries associated with the construction.
If one often complains that one does not make much progress in architecture today, despite the significant progress in all branches of the technical development associated with it, one should recognize that this is also due in particular to underestimation of detail processing. The in-depth and thorough study and development of the details is and remains a necessary prerequisite for real quality in architecture.
Prof. Giovanni Muzio, Polytechnic Milan
P.S.: translation from Deutsch to English through scan to text and auto-translation. The original is provided. I am not a german native, although I lived a few years and can understand some basic german, I leave this as it is. Will accept any help on the correction of the translation if provided. Thank you for your understanding.
