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DETAIL: The Latest Architecture and News

Pragmatic Utopia: How Reality Finally Caught Up with Fiction in BIG's Latest Monograph

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Architecture, with all its practitioners, academics, and theorists, have long been exploring utopic ideas with hopes of turning them into something concrete for the sake of a better world. But as the world heads towards an even greater polarization than it currently has, the architecture practice found itself having to adapt to the current systems of the planet, constrained by its ever-growing conditions. Slowly, practitioners realized that utopia can not truly be seen as the ideal solution, and needed to be readapted or morphed with other concepts for it to actually work. DETAIL's latest monograph BIG. Architecture and Construction Details / BIG. Architektur und Baudetails, a rapport between BIG’s imaginative, unbuilt utopias and functional, built architecture, explores 20 projects from the firm's workshop.

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DETAIL Prize 2020 Announced – Wanted: Outstanding Architecture

DETAIL is awarding the international DETAIL Prize 2020, and in doing so once again recognising the importance of innovative details for the overall design concept.

16 CAD Files of Roof Windows and Light Tubes Available for Your Next Project

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In the spirit of supporting our readers’ design work, the company Velux has shared a series of .DWG files with us of their different roofing windows models. The files can be downloaded directly from this article and include great amounts of detail and information.

Check the files below, separated into 'Pitched Roofs', 'Flat Roofs' and 'Light Tube'.

Lit Up: 16 Projects Illuminated by Skylights

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North light, south light, warm light and cool light – the diversity of skylights mean they can illuminate any space. Both a window and a ceiling, the hybrid nature of a skylight enables it to be a key element used in architectural spaces. The cool light of a north skylight is instrumental in creating a space to focus and work, while its south-facing counterpart lights up a space with that golden glow. Through its flexibility also come opportunities for expression, from its shape to its angle. Is a skylight a ribbon weaving through a roof panel? Or is it a series of dotted openings creating a mosaic of daylight on the floor? Check out these 16 examples of contemporary spaces lit by this key element below:

DETAIL Concept: Housing for Seniors

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The average age of the population in Western societies is rising steadily, sometimes faster than the age the individuals actually feel. Senior citizens, who are often full of vitality, have diverse conceptions of life. These are met by increasingly differentiated alternatives offering residential environments suitable for the later years of life. The designation of corresponding building projects as 50+ solutions can however give rise to a clash between the strategy of the housing industry and the target group’s perception of itself. Although the elderly generally wish to live in their own four walls for as long as possible, they tend to avoid considering the various available options. 

DETAIL: Best of Housing

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DETAIL: Best of Housing - Featured Image

Best of Housing by DETAIL Magazine: Housing is something individual: we each have our own ideas and aspirations for it, and we express a lifestyle by the way in which we house ourselves — the way in which we dwell. To dwell means to be “at home”, where one ideally has a sense of well-being.

When it comes to housing, there have been numerous studies of standards, developments and trends, which have analysed and compared people’s needs. But as needs change over time, so do trends. And also the global and demographic changes affecting society alter the way we dwell and flexibility becomes a decisive criterion.

The subject of housing also includes the integration of individual buildings in an urban context. Especially in cities, people often live in compact spaces in which there are fewer personal spaces and more communal areas. Yet each of us longs for a space of our own. Therefore it becomes important that designers develop ideas that meet our shared need for a balance between personal and communal space.

DETAIL: Building Simply Two

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As innovation and new developments in technology now follow each other faster and faster, making yesterday’s architectural fantasies today’s construction realities, there’s already a movement to return to the essential things in life: be it a quest for sustainability, which implies basic principles such as incorporating a region’s typologies and materials, or for reasons of expense, which often prompt a search for efficient designs or manufacturing technology, or even aesthetic requirements that allow people to step out of our increasingly noisy and heterogeneous environment.