This project was an investigation into the future of the architectural detail. Beginning with the question, “what is an architectural detail today?”, this project considered a range of critical positions on the issue, and tested their outcome through the design and fabrication of an architectural detail.
The project was to redesign a stair in relation to the Eames House. Within this project we found ourselves designing a stair in regard to the autonomous or subervise detail and the detail as abstraction. This stair, through a series of repetitions, hides the true, joint detail and leaves the aesthetic detail. This makes the visible details abnormal, and the true, join details unexpected. In reference to the Eames House, this stair is clearly an autonomous detail, looking nothing like anything within the house, yet works in parallel as a detail of abstraction, hiding the true construction. While the original stairs within the house do use wood and metal, this new version takes the simplified detail as motif, and revamps the design as an aesthetic architectural stair that makes a statement of its own.
Team: Alayna Davidson, Asmaa Abu Assaf, Julia Arnold, and Heidi A.Y.
instructor: Dwayne Oyler