Inked

In reflection of Zaera’s “The Politics of the Envelope: A political Critique of Materialism,” I find it necessary as an architecture student to visualize the envelope of a building as the literal skin of a human. What we know about the skin is that it is the largest organ of the human body. Furthermore it performs millions of functions that we are completely unaware of. It is fundamentally a protection for our internal organs, but more than that we have adopted it as a beautiful illustration and visualization of who we are as an individual. Evolution has adopted it as our identity and we have in some cases gone beyond the scope of what is healthy, to alter that identity.

I do not think that an architecture student would rebuke that the building envelope is important. In fact I tend to agree that in a world where flexibility and adaptability are prioritized, the building envelope becomes even more important as the interior has the potential to become less and less specific.

As we continue to evolve in a graphic world where perception and visual presence means everything, thinking of the building envelope as a building’s conceptual skin is valuable for my thought process. With its integrated function with our other systems, yet overall visual representation of who we are, perhaps Zaera is right afterall when saying that the architect’s sole focus should be that of the building envelope.