If you could invite 21 of today’s most brilliant architects to dinner, who would they be? And if you seated each luminary between a pair of architecture students primed on one of the architect’s most significant works, what conversations might you overhear? Short of actually holding that imaginary gathering, Beyond the Envelope is as close as most of us will get to hearing, for example, Pritzker Prize–winner Wang Shu discuss modernity and tradition in the construction of the Ningbo Historic Museum; AL_A director Maximiliano Arrocet describe “sculpting with shadows” to design Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology; or Sir Peter Cook range from the functionality of the nozzles on Kunsthaus Graz to his interlocutor’s taste in shirts, all in one place.
The book’s candid, insightful, and sometimes revelatory interviews were conducted online by final-year master of architecture students in a building-envelope course at New York Institute of Technology, between 2021 and 2023, and broadcast as part of the school’s program of public events. Edited and introduced by the students’ instructor, architect Tom Verebes, each interview focuses on a single building, notable for its innovative envelope. Professional photographs (principally by RECORD contributing photographer Iwan Baan and London-based Hufton & Crow) and student-generated graphic analysis complement the interviews and generate “aha” moments throughout.
Six themes organize the projects. The first four—form, matter, identity, and environment—are self-explanatory. They include among their examples OMA’s reinvention of the skyscraper in CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, Reiser + Umemoto Architecture’s play of mass and porosity in O-15 Tower in Dubai, Herzog & de Meuron’s reuse of a historic police station in Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Art in Hong Kong, and the evolution of passive cooling and ventilation in Foster + Partners’ 30 St. Mary Axe, London.
Cloud 9’s Media TIC in Barcelona flaunts a facade of air-filled ETFE cushions and a bioluminescent exoskeleton. Photo © José Miguel Hernandez, courtesy Cloud 9 / Enric Ruiz-Geli, click to enlarge.
The remaining two themes—experience and interaction—benefit from Verebes’s introduction. Experience pertains to the atmosphere, mood, or emotive impact that the building envelope achieves through such effects as light or mediated graphic design, he writes. Illustrating this, Galleria Centercity (UNStudio), with its electronic-screen envelope, generates a sense of dynamism and evanescence that belies the building’s stasis. The sixth theme, interaction, pertains to envelope-integrated technology such as sensors, robotics, and actuating systems by which the architecture becomes responsive. The Shed (Diller Scofidio + Renfro), with its transformable envelope and volume, exemplifies this group. Themes overlap from building to building, and discussion of each project ranges across multiple categories.
Among the book’s many highlights, this reader will be pondering in particular Wang Shu’s insights into integrating technology and craft in the use of recycled and mixed materials, a practice that’s increasingly needed worldwide. At Ninbgo, the process entailed intensive research into craft workers’ methods and iterative on-site communication with them, a large material-deposit yard on-site, photographs and computer technology to generate high-resolution elevation drawings, and 1:1 prototypes and mock-ups. “Construction cannot simply be done with drawings, nor by the craftsmen according to traditional habits,” Wang says. “In fact, a whole new space has emerged between the two, a process that is both controllable and not entirely controllable.” Embracing this hybrid condition of semi-control, he adds, “is not only about the saving of materials or resources, but also has a significant cultural meaning—that is, the restoration of memories, the preservation of time, and the preservation of the experience of time.”
Also memorable are Enric Ruiz-Geli’s no-excuses approach to net zero design at market cost and Kai-Uwe Bergmann’s challenge to conventional zoning. Oh, and Jeanne Gang’s take on mass customization. The list goes on.
Beyond the Envelope represents a significant contribution of firsthand accounts of some of this century’s most compelling architecture—its ideas and processes. In addition to the insights shared, the warmth and directness of the book’s dialogue format, structured by the students’ carefully composed questions, make it an enjoyable read. Instead of that imaginary dinner party, consider this book as an invitation to take your lunch to a park, or order a glass of red at your neighborhood haunt, and dip into a rich conversation.
