Surface Consciousness

′Surface′ is the current buzz word in contemporary architecture. The most exciting and cutting edge architectural projects, such as Foreign Office Architect′s Yokohama Port Terminal and Mark Goulthorpe′s Aegis Hyposurface, are being carefully conceptualised and crafted to make surface their main focus. Rather than seeking to define a new movement, this title demonstrates that for architecture surface is now far more than a ′crust′ or ′decorative strategy′, setting up meaningful relationships between contemporary methods of visioning, making and fabricating. Prompted by digital advancements, surface consciousness represents a whole new way of conceiving tectonic form. Whereas classical and even Modernist architecture polarised ornament and structure, contemporary techniques allow for an integration and blurring of the inside with the outside. In architectural terms this enables an unparalled freedom of expression and form. This is apparent in the diversity of the work featured here by those such as Herzog & de Meuron, Michael Trudgeon, Ashton Raggatt McDougall(ARM) and Lyons, in which a new delight emerges in patterning and texture as well as the sensuous and the ornamental. Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM) Mark Burry Bernard Cache dECOi Herzog & de Meuron Horst Kiechle Lyons Minifie/Nixon Julieanna Preston Michael Trudgeon Wood/Marsh

Editorial (Helen Castle).

Introduction (Mark Taylor).

Between Surface and Substance (Mark Burry).

Philibert de L′Orme Pavilion: Towards an Associative (Bernard Cache).

Amorphous Structures (Horst Kiechle).

Surface–Talk (Mark Taylor).

Volcanic Matter: The Architecture of Whakaari/White Island (Sarah Treadwell).

Masked Matter and Other Diagrams (Hans Frei).

From Microcosm to Macrocosm: The Surface of Fuller and Sadao′s US Pavillion at Montreal Expo ′67 (Timothy M. Rohan).

In Search of the Plasma Membrane (Michael Trudgeon).

Conveying 3–D Shape and Depth with Textured  and Transparent Surfaces(Victoria Interrante).

Sticks and Stones: Skin and Bones (Peter Wood).

Ornamental Operations (Brent Allpress).

Seduction, Subversion and Predation: Surface Characteristics (Michael J. Ostwald).

Sewing Surface: Ground Matters Beneath the Eiffel Towel (Julieanna Preston).

Surface: Architecture′s Expanded Field (Karen Burns).

Contributor Biographies.

Interior Eye: Deluxe Apartments in the Sky (Craig Kellogg).

Practice Profile: Kathryn Findlay of Ushida Findlay (Neil Spiller).

Building Profile: Federation Square, Melbourne (Jeremy Melvin).

Engineering Exegesis: Blurring the Lines: Mediating Between Analogue and Digital Skill Sets (Mark Bury).

Highlights from Wiley Academy (Jane Peyton).

Congratulatios to Jayne Merkel (Helen Castle).

Invisibly Informal (Lucy Bullivant).

Site Lines: Building Exploratory (Hannah Ford).