Wednesday 23 April 2014

Buildings and Facade

Text : Nor Azua Ruslan

[ Dressing Architecture : Colour, Style & Fashion ]
In Relation With Architects and Clothing

Original works submitted to the Manchester School of Architecture for the Bachelor of Architecture dated April 2009. Received a commendation in Summer 2010.


2.2] Buildings and Facade
Buildings are actually similar to human beings. In addition, buildings are normally being occupied and used by human beings; thus building’s façades relatively have a similarity to human’s clothing. In design practice, an architect or a designer intended to act like a fashion designer when it comes to designing a façade. Facades are designed with different materials, colours or even patterns. Architects or designer has a passion on how to make their buildings appear in different fashion facades. Therefore, for some reason, architects are treating buildings as a mantra of an organism in our life incomparable to humans and clothing too. In comparison to a need of clothes to protect the body, buildings need façade’s fabric to protect their skeleton too. Imagine a building without a façade, and imagine a human naked without clothes if that make a sense. To differentiate a necessity of clothing in different climate, buildings need façade which suited the climate as well. If a building is located in cold climate, therefore the façade needs to have a thermal insulation, this applies to clothes that the people who lived in that climate need to keep them warm .
The Buildings are just like human beings; the facades are similar to clothing. We, as modern designers or architects, like to act as fashion designers; designing facades with many materials some of them are not suitable to certain places based upon the local weather, latitude and culture.[2]

Both garments and buildings protect and shelter the body while providing a means to express identity. While the earliest examples of clothing and buildings were not ‘designed‘ but rather devised out of necessity, contemporary practitioners in both fields have continued to address the human imperative for shelter in ingenious ways...... Designers in both fields have recently begun to develop structural skins that incorporate the bones, or structure, into the surface of a building or a garment. Toyo Ito’s Tod’s Omotesando Building (2002–04) and Mikimoto Ginza 2 (2004–05) in Tokyo feature glass and concrete skins that join structure and façade in a single surface to create a distinctive and elegant overall pattern. A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) is a revolutionary industrial process and product created by fashion designer Miyake Issey and design engineer Fujiwara Dai that is a means for producing seamless garments, complete pieces of clothing that do not require sewing.[3]



[2] Danny S. (no date). Unsustainable Building Facades and Fashions in Surabaya, p.68
[3] Skin+Bones,Paralel Practise in Architecture’, in SKIN+BONES Gallery guide, http://www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?&id=370 (accessed Jan 2009)

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