Active Detailing

Leader: Leisa Tough

Timing: Block mode (Summer), 4-8 December 2023

Enrolment: Open for self enrolment

Details are small parts, but they might be strategically deployed to stitch together, to graft and to intimately reengage us. Active detailing is a material-based practice wherein we might rearrange the whole through its parts, engaged in close proximity to and in meaningful engagement with material processes and outcomes. Moving between practises of ‘care’ and of ‘making do’ active detailing engages the complexity of the interaction with the thing itself within the spontaneity and complexity of the ebb and flow of making. The work of ‘detailing’ in contemporary practice negotiates the gap between the visions of the designer and the turpitude of the building site; ‘detailing’ is near to the nature of the building practice, to materials and material processes, and near also to the thing itself. In this nearness we feel the building, what it is like to touch, smell and feel it. Yet detailing is often reduced by the demands of capitalist building practices to the designer merely imparting ‘intent’ to the builder, detailing to standard details, typical details, minimal details. Intimately engaged with these smallest units, we will practice architecture as a jeweller might. We will explore local case studies in person - examining buildings as a botanist might examine the workings of a flower. As we look at spaces, we will think about how we live in the most intimate dimensions, for example, how does the shape of a pocket relate to the height of the bar? Or how might details allow us to remake a space in conversation with the existing built fabrics. The elective will take students through iconic and local examples of detailing; to consider the implications of this smallest unit within broader contexts and address how we should build in the era of climate change.