...feel free to interrupt me at any time.
I'm designing a detail for a stair...
What is it to design a stair before its surroundings?
What is it to design the in-between before the ends?
The path before the destination?x
a stair...is senseless without context.
It is an absurd thing.
...that we engage in a rational way.It is a tool that has in the past been conceived to induce graceful movement awkward movement, social movement, reflective movement, mass movement, individual movement, quick movement and slow movement.
Through control of the step, the architect has control over pace and speed of movement, about whether congregation may occur on the stair or not, about generally how a pedestrian moves through space at that particular point, over what, if anything, a person may see from the stair.
What is it to design a detail of a stairway, an architectural detail in-and-of-itself? I feel that any detail I select on the stair will be ambiguous because it is the stair that becomes the detail, itself. The details of the stair are not driving the design... the stair itself is the conceptual engine.
I'm beating my head against my desk trying to figure out how to make "synthetic" fit into the picture for the sake of the excercise... but what are we being asked for here? Design or a material detail? I don't argue that the one can be the same but I do not believe they are always one and the same.
I'm afraid I got a bum material... synthetics. I know it has potential... limitless potential, in fact. But that's just it. A primary property of synthetic materials is their ability to be anything, any state, any form, accomplish any task, etc... it cannot serve very well as a material inspiration. It's qualities are "all of them," its materiality is "anything."
