Not until that I started working in the ‘real world’ did the I realize I most lack experience in the detail.

But at the same time it’s the thing that most interests me as I can finally engage in something more ‘concrete’, that the designs can be rooted in reality.

However, I did not really have such training to dealing with architectural detail. At work I’m force to quickly come up with solutions without much thoughts. Therefore, I want to know more and make more nuanced decisions in regarding to details.

Going through books online and sources elsewhere, there are a few types of books that approaches detail differently:

1. The Technical Books: These ones are essentially a handbook for how to actual detail/ a sort of reference guide. The author decides how to organize the sets of details base on their understanding of what a detail is. In the ‘Architectural Detailing: Function, Constructibility, and Aesthetics’ by Edward Allen and Patrick Rand, it’s organized, as in its title, into three categories. While in David Kent Ballast’s ‘ Architect’s Handbook of Construction Detail’, the details are organized by material: concrete, masonary, metal, wood, door finish, etc. These books approaches the topic via categorization of typologies to create some vocabulary.
   
2. The Case Study Books: These books studies built buildings via a holistic analysis of the building. The building themselves are informed by the details. I’ve found a set of them, more specifically perhaps details dealing with offices or arts and culture buildings or residential. I haven’t yet went through them but I suppose there’s a macro analysis of which details are relevant to which buildings.
   
3. The Principles Books: These are far more interesting as that the details have been abstracted, through some philosophical and historical research, where details as a concept has been analyzed, where the ‘Why’ has been fleshed out more thoroughly. Edward R. Ford’s The Architectural Detail is one such example and I look forward to extracting some knowledge from this book.

To have a more solid basis I’ll tackle the principles to have a more solid context to judge the case studies and then to come up with some personal judgement on details.

I did a quick skim of The Architectural Detail , essentially for the next weeks I’ll do a run down of its major themes:

What is a detail?

There is no detail.

The detail as motif

The detail as an order

The detail as representation of construction

The detail as autonomous