虽然立面是建筑中最彻底的理论元素之一，但它也是自 19 世纪末以来最受质疑的元素之一。在现代建筑技术的推动下，立面从结构性能中解放出来，可能无意中引发了其理论挑战。在建筑学科中，对立面的传统理解是由外观驱动的，主要集中在符号学和构图操作（比例法则和语言规范）上，这些操作通常部署在建筑围护结构的表面上。
While the façade is one of the most thoroughly theorized elements of architecture, it is also one of the most questioned since the end of the 19th century. The liberation of the facade from structural performances, facilitated by modern building technologies, may have inadvertently triggered its theoretical challenges. Within the discipline of architecture, the traditional understanding of the façade is driven by faciality and focuses primarily on semiotic and compositional operations (proportional laws and linguistic codes) which are generally deployed on the building envelope’s surface.
本书的假设是，尽管自现代主义以来立面的危机持续了很长时间，但建筑围护结构仍然是建筑的关键元素（事实上，也许是最关键的元素之一），但它的表现是通过经济、技术和环境偶然性的字面和物质体现发生的，而不是通过表面的辩证法。 装饰表现。整个20世纪建筑技术的指数级发展，加上现代建筑的大规模，削弱了“立面”的构图和装饰能力，有利于“建筑围护结构”的材料、数量和技术性能。微观剖面分析不再是对立面的表面理解，而是成为我们在建筑学科中超越立面历史构成的主要工具。
The hypothesis of this book is that despite the extended crisis of the façade since modemism, the building envelope remains a crucial element of architecture (in fact, perhaps one the most crucial elements), but its performance occurs through the literal and material embodiments of economic, technological, and environmental contingencies rather than through the dialectics of superficial, ornamental representation. The exponential development of building technologies across the 20th century, coupled with the large scale of modern construction, has diminished the compositional and ornamental capacities of the “façade”in favor of the material, quantitative, and technical performances of the “building envelope.”Rather than the surfacial understanding of the façade, a micro-sectional analysis has become our primary vehicle to transcend the historical constitution of the façade in the discipline of architecture.
因此，建筑表皮的美学和情感表现必须与相关的经济、技术、文化和政治生态重新整合，以重建一个合适的当代建筑学科。我们在这里试图构建的理论——我们希望——将克服迄今为止被建筑技术理论化的两种话语：构造学和现象学。虽然《建构文化研究》仍然是一篇重要的参考文章，作为最新的一次尝试理论化建筑构造的重要努力，但我们相信，当代建筑的案例不能再被包含在构造学的领域内，或者完全被现象学分析所描述。生态和环境问题的日益相关性和紧迫性，以及我们可以称之为后人类敏感性的崛起，要求对建筑技术理论进行全面的重塑，而建筑表皮是探索这一重构的关键领域。
Therefore, the aesthetic and affective performance of the envelope must become re-integrated with its associated eoonomic, technological, cultural, and political ecologies in order to reconstruct aproper contemporary discipline of the building envelope. The theory we are aiming to construct here will-we hope-overcome the two discourses that have so far co-opted the architectural theorization of building technologies: tectonics and phenomenology. While Studies in Tectonic Culure remains an important reference text, as the latest significant attempt to theorize building construction, we believe that the casuistic of contemporary buildings can no longer be contained within the realm of the tectonics or entirely described within a phenomenological analysis. The increasing relevance and urgency of ecological and environmental concerns and the rise of what we could describe as post-hanan sensibilities require a complete reframing of the theories of building technology, and the building envelope is a crucial field to explore this reconstruction.
我们在这里的目标是对建筑表皮作为一项研究的过程、生态和组合进行重新评估，这些过程、生态和组合是与建筑领域内外的技术和技术发展并行进化的，主要是在20世纪。诸如玻璃之类的材料以及诸如雨屏或幕墙之类的组装逻辑并不是文化或政治概念的表示，而是本身就具体体现了更大的生态、政治和文化。同时出现的政治规模的表现，既解决了更广泛的生态问题，又通过建筑细节进行了微观政治规模的管理，这要求重新构建建筑感觉，摆脱现象学、人文主义的偏见。
What we are aiming here is the re-evaluation of the building envelope as a study of the processes, ecologies, and assemblages that have evolved in parallel to technical and technological development inside and outside of the field of architecture primarily during the 20* century. Materials such as glass, and assembly logics such as rain screens or curtain walls are not representations of cultural or political concepts, but are, in themselves, literal embodiments of larger ecologies, politics, and cultures. The emergence, at once, of a carmopolitical scale of performance, which addresses wider ecological concerns and a micropolitical scale of management through the building details, requires a reframing of architectural sensibilities and a shift away from the biases of the phenomenological, humanistic perspective.
当代立面的每个材料方面都与其所属的经济、政治和社会结构的复杂生态有直接联系。例如，第二次世界大战后，在美国和德国，暖通空调被重新用于建筑行业；1973年石油危机后，人们倾向于使用不透明和绝缘的立面；1991年苏联解体后，在面密封包层中使用钛。这些都是建筑立面技术和材料与其多种生态之间至关重要的联系的例子。至关重要的是，我们将重新调整建筑技术历史分析和理论，以适应新的建筑敏感性，这将有助于应对建筑技术的生态更广泛的影响。
Each material aspect of the contemporary façade has direct attachments to the complex ecology of economies, politics, and social structures to which it belongs For example, the repurposing of the warmachine after World War II toward the building industry, both in the United States and in Germany, the tendency toward the use of opaque and insulated façades after the 1973 oil crisis or the use of titanium in face-sealed envelopes after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1991, are all examples of the crucial links between the technologies and materials of the building envelope and their multiple ecologies.’ It is crucial that we realign the historical analysis and theories of building technologies with a new breed of architectural sensibilities that engage the wider effects of eologies of building technology.
围护结构组合和环境适应 ENVELOPE ASSEMBLAGES AND ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTATION
我们将在这项工作中将信封组合的概念用作核心方法论工具，它描述了将各种材料结合起来形成一个单一的整体，一个大于其各部分之和的整体。围护结构组合可以解释为特定建筑环境条件下的临时平衡状态（“环境”是指影响建筑物的一整套技术、气候、社会、经济和政治条件）。我们信封组合概念的核心是环境适应过程。组合体将决定建筑围护结构的复杂因素和力量组合在一起。例如，我们可以参考围护结构组合的环境适应程度，以了解其性能以及这些条件的变化如何影响其设计。在表达这些环境输入时，围护结构组合可以采用能够部署在广泛项目中的标准形式，或针对特定情况设计的特定模式。通用和特定、廉价和昂贵、本地和全球之间的可能性范围规定了信封组合可以满足不同环境条件的性能。然而，信封组合的高度环境适应并不一定意味着好的设计：完美的环境适应也是几乎完全屈服于主要环境力量的指标，并且在突然变化的情况下可能危及物种在这样的条件下。过度的适应性也可能成为信封组合的弹性的障碍。
The concept of envelope assemblage, which we will use as a central methodological tool through this work, describes the incorporation of various materials to form a singular ensemble, a whole which isgreater than the sum of its parts. An envelope assemblage can be interpreted as a temporary state of equilibrium within the conditions of a particular building environment (and by “environment”we mean a whole set of technical, climatic, social, eonomic, and political conditions affecting a building). Central to our notion of envelope assemblages is the process of environmental adaptation. Assemblages compound the complex set of agents and forces that determine a building envelope. For example, we can refer to the degree of environmental adaptation of an envelope assemblage in order to understand its performances and how changes in these conditions may affect its design. In articulating theseenvironmental inputs, an envelope assemblage may adopt a standard form, capable of being deployedin a wide range of projects, or a spedfic mode, designed for a particular situation. The range of possibilities between generic and specific, cheap and expensive, local and global sets out performances that an envelope assemblage may cater to in response to differing environmental conditions. However, a high degree of environmental adaptation in an envelope assemblage does not necessarily imply a good design: a perfect environmental adaptation is also an index of the near-total submission to predominant environmental forces and may endanger the species in the event of a sudden change in such conditions. Excessive fitness may also become an impediment to the resilience of an envelope assemblage.
就像自然物种一样，包膜组合也经历了一个发展、增殖的过程，有时甚至灭绝。与细节不同，组合从来都不是建筑奇点;相反，它们动员了一种不断发展的与建筑材料及其生态相关的元素和非个人力量的结构。例如，1990年代德国的双幕墙取得了巨大的成功，这是由于政治生态的影响，包括：绿色运动的突出;通过就业法的事实（共同决定法，使员工可以在工作空间内要求可操作的窗户和阳光直射）;以及繁荣的经济。经济疲软、空间效率的压力以及负担得起的优质替代技术的可用性大大降低了美国和亚洲等其他环境中对这种双立面技术的需求。
Just like natural species, envelope assemblages undergo a process of development, proliferation, and sometimes— extinction. Unlike details, assemblages are never architectural singularities; they mobilize instead an evolving fabric of elemental and impersonal forces associated with architectural materials and their ecologies. For example, the enormous success that double façades enjoyed in Germanyduring the 1990s was due to a politico-ecological conflation of effects that included: the prominence of the Green movement; the fact that employment laws were passed (the law of co-determination, which made it possible for employees to require operablewindows and direct sunlight in their work spaces); and a prosperous economy. A weaker economy, the pressures of space efficiency, and the availability of affordable and superior altemative technologies have considerably reduced the appetite for such double-façade technologies in other environments such as the United States and Asia.
任何信封组合上都不会附加一个单一的、占主导地位的表示。取而代之的是，存在着多种相互冲突的叙述和包含多种生态的子叙述，这些叙述通常可能在建筑学科之外。围护结构组合，如预制混凝土、面封式围护结构或媒体立面，不会突然出现，而是在平稳的历史连续体中演变，沿着一条不可阻挡的完美之路前进;它们没有任何渐进式的进化。它们可能蛰伏数十年，从平行行业迁移，或因新的环境压力或简单的事故和致命的错误而发生变异。
There is never a singular, dominant representation attached to any envelope assemblage. Instead, there is a multiplicity of conflicting narratives and sub-narratives encompassing multiple ecologies, which may often be external to the architectural discipline. Envelope assemblages, such as precast concrete, face-sealed envelopes or media façades do not appear suddenly and evolve in asmooth historical continuum, following an inexorable path toward perfection; they do not have a progressive evolution whatsoever. They may lie dormant for decades, migrate from parallel industries, or mutate in response to new environmental pressures or simple accidents and fateful errors.
如果说传统的建筑史为我们呈现了一系列规范的建筑和英勇的建筑师，他们依次破坏了先前存在的秩序，那幺我们在这里寻求一种不稳定的叙述，其中不时出现融合的实例，当一切都暂时达到表面上的平衡状态时。我们在这里的方法将这些时刻溶解为组合的动态演变，我们可以跟随它们的兴衰。从这个角度来看，康宁玻璃、H.H.罗伯逊和杜邦等非人类代理人在此过程中发挥了决定性作用，因为他们生产了全新的人造材料，这些材料在当代建筑围护结构的质量中占很大比例。如果密斯·凡·德·罗（Mies van der Rohe）能够在1960年代上市之前获得皮尔金顿的浮法玻璃，他会变成什幺样子？如果没有苏联的最终解体及其对钛价的影响，弗兰克·盖里（Frank O.Gehry）的命运会怎样？
If traditional architectural history presents us with a sequence of canonical buildings and heroic architectsl who sequentially destabilize the pre-existing orders, we have sought here a narrative of instability punctuated by instances of convergence, when everything momentarily reaches a state of apparent equilibrium. Our approach here dissolves these moments into a dynamic evolution of assemblages, where we might follow their rise and fall. From this perspective, non-human agents, with names such as Corning Glass, H.H. Robertson, and DuPont acquire a decisive role in the process, as the producers of entirelynew and artificial materials that account for a large percentage of a contemporary building envelope’s mass. What would have become of Mies van der Rohe if he could have had access to Pilkington’s floatglass before it was commercially available in the 1960s? And what fate might have befallen Frank O.Gehry without the final collapse of the Soviet Union and its effect on titanium prices?
立面装配的演变 THE EVOLUTION OF ENVELOPE ASSEMBLAG
Buildings and their environments are perpetually changing, but they are also constrained by a limited set of possibilities, both past and future. Envelope assemblages establish and feed these constraints, without precluding their future evolution. They produce a design space, that is, a collection of intrinsic qualities of material components (such as tensile strength, thermal conductivity, or flexibility) as well as environmental factors (such as supply chains, markets, political economies, aesthetic trends, and regulatory frameworks), all of which, as topological field, delimit the possible evolutions of a material assemblage.
建筑物及其环境在不断变化，但它们也受到过去和未来有限可能性的限制。包络组合创建并满足了这些约束，而不排除它们未来的发展。它们产生了一个设计空间，即材料组件的内在品质（如抗拉强度、导热性或柔韧性）以及环境因素（如供应链、市场、政治经济、审美趋势和监管框架）的集合，所有这些都作为拓扑场，界定了材料组合的可能演变。
These environmental factors not only modify the actual design of material assemblages through technological development, but also their semiotic performances and the way we experience them.
Materials and material assemblages inevitably become attached to multiple narratives and representational systems over time. For example, in the early 19th century, steel windows became appreciated for their strength, slenderness and, in contrast to wooden windows, resistance to decay.”
They were immediately assodated with modemist aesthetics and with the obsolescence of the traditional solid façade. While originally used for purely functional reasons, the material became imbued with “ideological merit.”-Steel windows evolved rapidly, which made them even more desirable. Yet it did not entirely guarantee the permanent success of the assemblage: the high consumption of steel during World War II led the industry to a retum to wooden window frames, as steel fabricators were pressed into military production. In Italy, seriously afflicted by the League of Nations’ embargo on coal shipments to the Axis powers, the use of steel windows came to be seen as a form of treason.”Both the signification and the experience of a façade assemblage may be dramatically affected by malfunctions in the socio-political environment as much as by its raw physical performance.
这些环境因素不仅通过技术发展改变了材料组合的实际设计，还改变了它们的符号学表现和我们体验它们的方式。随着时间的流逝，材料和材料组合不可避免地会依附于多种叙事和表征系统。例如，在 19 世纪初，钢窗因其强度、纤细以及与木窗相比的抗腐性而受到赞赏。他们立即被适度的美学和传统实心立面的过时所束缚。虽然最初纯粹是出于功能原因而使用，但该材料充满了“意识形态价值”。-钢窗发展迅速，这使得它们更加受欢迎。然而，这并不能完全保证组装的永久成功：二战期间钢铁的高消耗导致该行业重新转向木制窗框，因为钢铁制造商被迫进入军事生产。在意大利，受到国际联盟对轴心国煤炭禁运的严重影响，使用钢窗被视为一种叛国行为。立面组合的意义和体验都可能受到社会政治环境故障及其原始物理性能的显着影响。
These environmental factors not only modify the actual design of material assemblages through technological development, but also their semiotic performances and the way we experience them. Materials and material assemblages inevitably become attached to multiple narratives and representational systems over time. For example, in the early 19th century, steel windows became appreciated for their strength, slenderness and, in contrast to wooden windows, resistance to decay.” They were immediately assodated with modemist aesthetics and with the obsolescence of the traditional solid façade. While originally used for purely functional reasons, the material became imbued with “ideological merit.”-Steel windows evolved rapidly, which made them even more desirable. Yet it did not entirely guarantee the permanent success of the assemblage: the high consumption of steel during World War II led the industry to a retum to wooden window frames, as steel fabricators were pressed into military production. In Italy, seriously afflicted by the League of Nations’ embargo on coal shipments to the Axis powers, the use of steel windows came to be seen as a form of treason.”Both the signification and the experience of a façade assemblage may be dramatically affected by malfunctions in the socio-political environment as much as by its raw physical performance.
在这个分析中，我们试图挑战的另一个假设是现象学探究的还原形式（粗略地与性能或功能相关）和构造学（粗略地简化为技术）之间的传统联系，这是一种双重偏见，假设建筑物的体验完全由材料和构造问题形成——特别是减去表现元素。建筑永远不会在文化空白中体验;他们的经历也取决于自然和文化生态。我们对建筑的感知受到影响的经济、文化和政治制度的影响，即使这些经验的活力主要体现在建筑的材料组合上。
The other assumption that we are trying to challenge in this analysis is the now-traditional association between reductive forms of phenomenological inquiry (crudely associated with performance or function) and tectonics (crudely reduced to technicity), a dual bias that assumes that the experience of a building is exclusively formed by material and tectonic concerns-notably minus expressive elements. Buildings are never experienced in a cultural void; their experience is also contingent on both physical and cultural ecologies. Our perception of a building is affected by the economic, cultural, and political regimes that inform its reality, even if the dynamism of those experiences unfolds primarily in respect to the buildings’ material assemblages.
虽然建筑文化经常受到嵌入在材料和规范形式中的过时的象征和现象构造的影响，但由于当前的生态问题，建筑物的作用越来越多地由其环境性能（例如，绝缘能力或嵌入能量）决定以及他们对其他材料和经济的看法（例如，材料是否看起来坚固和/或昂贵）。尽管有时可以谈论材料的演变，例如从平板玻璃到浮法玻璃的进展，或者开发高强度混凝土和钢材品种——材料组合的谱系是解决物质文化作为受不断环境变化影响的动态过程的更有效手段。材料组合有时通过材料组合的改变而演变，但主要是通过材料的组合而演变，这可能决定性地影响其性能和行为。与其他技术对象一样，信封组合具有各种“存在模式”，并经历一个不断“成为”或阐述的过程；它们并不是孤立于历史的流动中的，即使它们能够运作可以说，从材料和构造理论到材料组合理论的转变对于为特定建筑围护结构产生新的“本体论”至关重要。
While architectural culture often remains under the influence of outdated symbolic and phenomenal constructs embedded in both material and canonical forms, due to current ecological concerns, the agencies of a building are increasingly determined by its environmental performances (for example, insulating capadity or embedded energy) and their perception in respect to other materials and economies (for example, whether materials appear solid and/or expensive).Although it is sometimes possible to speak about the evolution of materials-such as the progress from plate glass to float glass, or the development of high-strength varieties of concrete and steel—a genealogy of material assemblages is a more effective means for addressing material culture as a dynamic process affected by incessant environmental change. Material assemblages evolve sometimes through the alteration of their material oomposition, but mostly through their combination of materials, which may decisively affect their performance and behavior. Like other technical objects, envelope assemblages have various “modes of existence0 and experience a constant process of “becoming”or elaboration; they are not isolated aofonamtineitb a lam danas of amiotie ambiguity.from the flow of history, even if they are capable of operating with a large degree of semiotic ambiguity, adjusting over time to environmental changes. The shift from a theory of materials and tectonics to a theory of material assemblages is, arguably, cucial to the production of a new “ontology”for situated building envelopes.
材料与文化结构之间纠缠的一个例子是经常被引用的材料“道德”。道德主张在建筑史上很常见，尤其是在现代主义中：路易斯·卡恩（Louis Kahn）尊重诚实的砖块和拱门的真实表达；勒·柯布西耶谈到了贝隆·布鲁格的真诚，密斯·凡德罗赞扬了玻璃建筑的透明度。然而，当代世界的复杂性排除了任何代表任何特权材料的单一真实性或适当性的假设；当今运作的物质生态已经变得如此复杂，以至于很难对其道德、文化或技术的适当性做出判断。材料不再能够轻易地与某些“常数”或衡量它们应该如何使用的约束绑定在一起，而是，相反，由关于如何使用它们的发明和实验驱动。最近在砖中的应用，例如由 Gramazio 和 Kohler 开发的应用，或在 Herzog & de Meuron 的工作中开发的混凝土，为传统材料引入了全新的特性。模拟材料的效果和品质使得与材料相关的价值得以延续，即使所谓的材料真实性不存在或沉默。尽管它们的外观，马里奥·博塔的旧金山现代艺术博物馆上的砖块和詹姆斯·詹姆斯的石头都不是这样的。斯特林位于斯图加特的新国家美术馆是承重的。事实上，这些墙壁是由薄薄的材料单板组成，前者嵌入预制混凝土板，后者用钢夹悬挂在支撑混凝土墙上。然而，大多数人会认为这些建筑物是由“砖”和“石”建造的，并具有坚固性和永久性的品质。
An example of the entanglement between materials and cultural constructs is the often invoked “morality” of materials. Moral claims have been common through architectural history, particularly in modernism: Louis Kahn honored the honest bricks and the authentic expression of the arch; Le Corbusier spoke about the sincerity of Béron Brug and Mies van der Rohe praised the transparency of glass architecture. However, the complexity of the contemporary world precludes any assumptions on behalf of the singular authenticity or propriety of any privileged material or materials; the material ecologies operating today have becomeso complex that it is difficult to pass judgment on their moral, cultural, or technical appropriateness.Materials can no longer be easily bound to certain “constants”or constraints measuring how they should be used, but are, instead, driven by invention and experimentation regarding how they neight be used.Recent applications in brick, such as those developed by Gramazio and Kohler,”or concrete, in the work of Herzog & de Meuron, introduce entirely new properties to conventional materials. The capacity to simulate material effects and qualities allows values assodated with materials to be perpetuated, even if the so-called authenticity of a material isabsent-orsilent. Despite their appearance, neither the brick on Mario Botta’s San Francisco Museum of Modern Art nor the stone in James Stirling’s Neue Staatogalerie in Stuttgart are load-bearing. In fact, these walls are composed of thin veneers of material, inset in precast concrete panels in the former and hung with steel clamps from a supporting concrete wall in the latter. Yet most people will assume that these buildings are made of “brick”and “stone”and assodate with them qualities of solidity and permanence.
在建筑学科的想象中，材料一直占据着永久和静态的位置。但材料是不断运动的;它们不仅会膨胀、收缩、侵蚀和腐烂，而且还会受到自身环境变化的影响，它们与其他材料相关的价值变化以及各自的生态环境的变化。只要建筑仍然是一个多重力量在材料形成中发挥作用的领域，建筑将仍然是一个关于材料选择、应用、形式化甚至替代的决策、冲突和谈判的动态领域。在材料组合的世界里，没有惰性的、永恒的材料，比如路易斯·卡恩（Louis Kahn）的自我意识砖块或密斯·凡·德·罗（Mies van der Rohe）的陈色玻璃。物质组合不断移动，从构思到语用，通过文化、政治、生态和技术依附。
In the imaginary of the discipline of architecture, materials have always held a permanent and static place. But materials are constantly in motion; not only do they expand, contract, erode and decay, but they are affected by the changes in their own environment, their engagement with changing values relative to other materials and their respective ecologies. As long as architecture remains a field where multiple forces cystallize in material formations, buildings will remain a dynamic field of decisions,conflicts, and negotiations over material selection, application, formalization, and even substitution. In the world of material assemblages, there are no inert, timeless materials, such as the self-conscious bricks of Louis Kahn or the tran scendental glass of Mies van der Rohe. Material assemblages move ceaselessly, from ideation to pragmatics, through cultural, political, ecological and technical attachments.
问题不再是关于材料的真实性，而是关于与技术和文化生态相关的某些品质和效果的赋予情况。物质选择在做出时，以及当其产品受到不断变化的价值的影响时，都坚持着什幺样的文化和政治价值观？建筑的能动性不能再维持在建筑师作者的特权和狭隘范围内。建筑设计包括一个不断增长的代理领域，其不同的利益会随着时间的推移而变化。当然，这个扩大的选区包括非人类代理，例如材料本身。建筑能动性越来越多地被赋予物质性，而物质性又充当着政治、经济和社会责任的指挥者：陶氏化学、杜邦或洛科威等公司在当今建筑环境的建设中发挥的作用是巨大的，在建筑史上是前所未有的。然而，它们与该学科的历史建构形式相冲突，这些形式突出了理解建筑立面的构图和风格方法。这些是我们在这里旨在通过新的建筑围护结构理论来解决的冲突。
What cultural and political values do material choices uphold, both at the time when they are made, and when their products are subjected to changing values? The agency of architecture can no longer be maintained within the privileged and narrow sphere of the architect-author. Architectural dedsions comprise a growing field of agents, with differing interests that change over time. Of course, thisd expanded constituency includes non-human agents, such as materials themselves. Architectural agency is increasingly vested in materiality, which in tum acts as the conductor of political, economic, and social charges: the role that companies such as Dow Chemical, DuPont, or Rockwool play inthe construction of today’s built environment is enormous and unprecedented in the history of architecture. However, they are in conflict with the historically constructed forms of the discipline which foreground compositional and stylistic approaches to understanding building façades. These are the conflicts which we aim to resolve here with a new theory of the building envelope.
立面组合的环境动力学 THE ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMICS OF ENVELOPE ASSEMBLAGES
信封技术通常是从其他行业发展或迁移而来的。组合内不断变化的材料联盟可以从它们对特定环境的适应性来研究。立面组合可能在潜伏阶段存在很长时间，然后才能找到合适的环境来蓬勃发展。例如，1950 年代初在战后德国开发了外墙保温系统 （EIFS），作为一种有效且经济的系统，用于在能源和材料匮乏时期重建受损的墙壁和改造不足的建筑物。然而，ElFS 必须等到 1970 年代初，穿越大西洋迁移到美国，才能找到理想的环境：美国的大型住宅郊区开发项目成为这项技术的完美利基市场，它能够以相对较低的成本提供精心制作的外观。
Envelope technologies often evolve or migrate from other industries. The shifting material alliances within assemblages can be studied in terms of their adaptation to specific environments. A façade assemblage may exist fora long time in a latent stage, before it finds an appropriate environment in which to flourish. For example, the Exterior Insulation Fnishing System (EIFS) was developed in the early 1950s in post-war Germany as an effective and economic system for the reconstruction of damaged walls and the retrofitting of inadequate buildings during a time of energy and material scarcity. However, ElFS would have to wait until the early 1970s and migrate across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, in order to find its ideal environment: the large residential suburban developments in the United States became the perfect niche for this technology, which was able to provide a well-finished, crafted appearance at a relatively low cost.
环境适应对这些过程至关重要。特定材料的发明，通常是从另一种实践中转移过来的，只是其创造过程中的一个步骤。它向包络组合的转移是人工生态学进化的又一步。挤压铝技术首先在军事航空航天工业中发展起来，然后迁移到战后建筑行业，并成为高层幕墙组合建造的主要技术。但是，不同的环境因素也使战后新生的建筑业向挤压铝倾斜：例如，其卓越的耐腐蚀性、重量轻、质量和价格竞争力。与推动动植物物种进化的生存之战不同，任何建筑物种都需要类似的复杂因素组合才能获胜。
Environmental adaptation is crucial to these processes. The invention of a particular material, often transferred from another practice, is only a step in the process of its creation. Its transfer to envelope assemblages is another step in the evolution of artificial ecologies. Extruded aluminum technologies were developed first in the military aerospace industry well before migrating to the post-war building industry and becoming the predominant technology in the construction of high-rise curtain wall assemblages. But there was also a combination of different environmental factors that tilted the renascent post-war building industry toward extruded aluminum: for example, its superior resistance to corrosion, its light weight, its quality, and its price competitiveness.”Not unlike the battle for survival that drives evolution in animal and plant species, it takes a similar combination of complex factors for any architectural species to prevail.
试图以这种方式理解物质组合需要超越其先天属性，寻找具有多种生态的永久变化环境的背景。与生俱来的特性显然很重要：例如，石棉几十年来一直是一种半神话般的材料，既绝缘又耐用，而且似乎“无懈可击”。它的全部物质影响，特别是它长期以来被忽视或抑制的与人类呼吸系统的不兼容性，随后成为单一物质物种灾难性内爆的一个特殊例子。
Attempting to understand material assemblages in this manner requires searching beyond their innate properties toward the context of a permanently changing environment with multiple ecologies. Innate properties are obviously important: asbestos, for example, was for decades a semi-mythical material, both insulating and durable, and seemingly “unassailable.”Its full material impact, specifically its long ignored— or suppressed—incompatibility with the respiratory systems of humans, became, subsequently, an exceptional example of the catastrophic implosion of a single material species.
然而，与生俱来的材料特性并不能完全解释材料组合的弹性：完美的技术、环境或经济性能并不能保证其作为一个物种的生存。建筑用玻璃产品的分化发展就是一个很好的例子。玻璃板和玻璃砌块都是完全可行的幕墙系统，经过广泛使用和测试。然而，它们具有截然不同的审美效果，甚至有更多不同的文化联想。1980 年代，玻璃砌块在住宅开发中的大量使用使其无处不在，以至于其实用吸引力迅速消退，尤其是与平板玻璃技术同时提供的多种同时应用相比。玻璃砌块行业成为其自身成功的牺牲品，并随着对其年轻“工艺”的时尚欣赏逐渐消退而迅速消亡。
However, innate material properties do not account exclusively for a material assemblage’s resilience: an immaculate technological, environmental, or economic performance does not guarantee its survival as a species.The divergent evolution of glass products for buildings is a good example of this. Both glass sheets and glass blocks are perfectly viable façade systems, tried and tested through extensive use. However, they have quite different aesthetic effects and even more different cultural associations. The intensive use of glass blocks in residential developments in the 1980s made it so ubiquitous that its utilitarian appeal rapidly faded, foremost in comparison to the contemporaneous multiple and simultaneous applications that sheet-glass technology furnished. The glass block industry became a victim of its own success, and dedinedd quickly as the fashionable appreciation for its youthful “workmanship”faded.
引起一定时代兴趣的材料的兴衰是一个众所周知的故事：1973 年石油危机后幕墙的镜面涂层，1990 年代初经济不景气的波纹钢覆层，1990 年代末和 2000 年代初“壮观”期间的穿孔和膨胀金属雨幕。然而，材料组合的新陈代谢率比材料本身高得多，而且它们没有光荣的稳定性和持久性。
The rise and fall of materials that captured the interest of a certain time is a well-known narrative: mirror coating in curtain walls after the 1973 oil crisis, corrugated-steel cladding in the harsh economy of the early 1990s, perforated and expanded metal rainscreens during the “spectacular”late 1990s and early 2000s. However, material assemblages have a much higher metabolic rate than materials per se, and none of their honorable stability and permanence.
法律和监管框架通常是建筑围护结构动态的重要因素。战后美国的繁荣经济在很大程度上促进了郊区单户住宅的爆炸式增长，产生了相关技术的大规模开发和部署，包括在典型的美国家庭中加入空调系统。为了提供必要的内部控制（例如，关于湿度和温度），对防水膜、防潮层和隔热系统进行了深入研究，符合ASTM隔热标准，使隔热和防潮成为几十年来所有郊区房屋标准墙体组合的强制性元素。经济和监管环境的这种变化总是在创造包膜物种方面发挥强大的环境激励作用。
Legal and regulatory frameworks are often an important factor in the dynamics of building envelope spedes. The prosperous economies of post-war America, which largely sponsored the explosionof suburban, single-family housing, produced a massive development and deployment of allied technologies, including the incorporation of air-conditioning systems in the typical American home.In order to provide the necessary internal controls (for example, regarding humidity and temperature), headlong research into waterproofing membranes, moisture barriers, and insulation systems, conduding in the ASTM insulation standards, made thermal insulation and moisture restraints compulsory elements in standard wall assemblages for all suburban houses of this decades-long period.Such changes in the economic and regulatory environment always act as powerful environmental incentives in the creation of envelope species.
包络组合与其环境之间的适应可以遵循多种模式。虽然为非常具体的应用而设计的高度定制的组件往往比为更广泛应用而设计的组件具有的进化潜力要小得多，但生产独特架构的雄心壮志往往会引发新的包络组件的创建，这在图中已经变得普遍。
The adaptation between an envelope assemblage and its environment can follow multiple modes. While highly customized assemblages designed for very specific applications tend to have much less evolutionary potential than those designed for wider use applications, the ambition to produce unique architectures has often triggered the creation of new envelope assemblages, which, in tum, have become prevalent.
就像一匹纯种马一样，高度集成的组合会产生一种超足的形式，一种对独特环境的极端适应，这可能会限制其进化潜力。例如，由Chudc Hoberman设计的日本东京POLA银座大厦的立面，旨在提供自适应遮阳，但由于其复杂且高度分散的技术，不太可能成为主导因素，因此，它不太可能产生一个进化过程相反，单元式双层玻璃幕墙系统或浸形混凝土幕墙具有， 在过去的二十年里，在绝缘价值和施工速度方面经历了巨大的发展，正是因为他们的市场规模和无处不在。
Like a purebred horse, a highly integrated assemblage produces a form of hypertelia, an extreme adaptation to a unique environmentthat may curtail its evolutive potential. For example, the façade of the POLA Ginza Building in Tokyo, Japan, a project designed by Chudc Hoberman to provide adaptive shading, is less likely to become a dominant spedes predisely because of its sophisticated and highly spedialized technologies, and, therefore, it is not likely to originate an evolutive process On the contrary, unitized, double-glazed curtain wall systems or dip-form concrete façades have, inthe last two decades, gone through a huge development in terms of insulation values and speed of construction, precisely because of the scale and ubiquity of their markets.
另一个极端也是如此：皮尔金顿在 1960 年代后期开发了点固定结构玻璃组合，或者从 2000 年代初开始开发了 LED 幕墙，这些都是非常复杂的技术应用，旨在产生截然不同的视觉效果。然而，鉴于他们的成功，他们成为主流，因为他们的技术随后发展出低成本的变化。
The other extreme is also true: the development of point-fixed structural glazing assemblages in the late 1960s by Pilkington, or the development of LED façades from the early 2000s emerged as very sophisticated technological applications aimed at producing radically different visual effects. However, given their success, they became mainstream as their technologies subsequently developed low-cost variations.
甚至还有更复杂的情况，即高度集成的组合包含广泛传播的潜在潜力，被故意阻止传播，因为它们作为立面组合的商业潜力远小于它们在建筑行业之外的独特性所获得的收入。例如，苹果公司将“专有”细节纳入苹果商店，表明公司意识到其定制设计组合的商业潜力，并试图通过法律手段（专利）控制该物种的传播，以保护其独特性。
There are even more complex situations where highly integrated assemblages that contain the latent potential for a broad dissemination were deliberately prevented from spreading because their commercial potential as façade assemblages is much smaller than the revenues obtained from their uniqueness outside the building industry. For example, Apple’s “proprietary”details incorporatedinto Apple Stores demonstrates the company awareness of the commercial potential of their custom-designed assemblages, and the attempt to control the dissemination ofthe species through legal means(patenting), in order to preserve its uniqueness.
无论如何，特定组合与其环境之间的关系越强，其进一步进化的潜力就越大。这种关于建筑技术的发展、传播和消亡的环境美学观点，与Banham对Giedion的“第一”（或专利）作为真正变革性工具的蔑视相呼应。可以说，对班纳姆来说，最重要的是达尔文主义的一面：一个物种在“全速飞行”中的整个弧线和扫荡，而不是它从创造本身的原始汤中出现的那一刻。
In any case, the stronger the relationship between a particular assemblage and its environment, the greater its potential for further evolution. This environmental-aesthetic perspective on thedevelopment, spread, and extinction of building technologies which we are taking echoes Banham’s disdain for Giedion’s “firsts”(or patents) as truly transformative vehicles.”For Banham, arguably, what mattered foremost was the Darwinian side of all of this: the entire arc and sweep of a species in “full flight”rather than the moment of its emergence from the primeval soup of creation itself.
建筑围护结构的本体论 AN ONTOLOGY OF THE BUILDING ENVELOPE
以自然科学家的方式，我们试图在本书中发展几种分析体系，以解决我们试图构建的新兴领域。我们决定继续开发多种分析路径，而不是尝试单一的综合分类。就像杰弗罗伊·圣希莱尔（Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire）的方法一样——作为乔治·居维叶（Georges Cuvier）百科全书式知识的替代物——我们的目标是发展现代建筑围护结构的本体论，而不是对新的围护结构类型进行系统分类。对我们来说，更重要的是了解建筑围护结构是如何发展的，以及它们是如何演变和分化的，而不是产生一个有弹性的分类或一个完美的分类法。
In the manner of natural scientists, we have attemptedto develop in this book several regimes of analysis toaddress the emerging field we are trying to construct.We have decided to proceed through the development of multiple paths of analysis instead of attempting a single comprehensive classification. Like in Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s approach— as an altemative to Georges Cuvier’s encyclopedic knowledge,-we aim to develop an ontology of the modern building envelope rather than a systemic classification of new envelope types. It is more importantfor us to understand how building envelopes have developed and how they evolve and differentiate, rather than to produce a resilient classification or a perfect taxonomy.
这样一来，自然科学的模式就变成了乌达尔。但重要的是要了解我们的方法和我们研究的模型之间的差异：虽然自然科学指的是通过遗传密码繁殖的种群，但我们处理的是设计产生的单个人工制品的人工种群，其进化纯粹是通过创新和适者生存发生的，而不是通过遗传遗传。如果一些适用于自然科学的自负不适用于我们的 spedmens——例如后天性 tntitr 的遗传——那幺我们分析的各种范围就可以满足进化理论家在自然科学中的许多关注点。当我们构建这种建筑围护结构的本体论方法时，我们避免了对物种进行单一分类，而是选择通过四个不同的角度来分析这个主题：类型学、功能学、基本学和组织学。
In doing this, the model of the natural sciences has become oudal. But it is important to understand the differences between our approach and the models we have studied: while natural sciences refer to populations which reproduce through a genetic code, we are dealing with an artificial population of single artifacts produced by design, whose evolution occurs purelythrough innovation and the survival of the fittest, rather than bygenetic inheritance. If some of the concems that apply to the natural sciences do not apply to our spedmens-such as the inheritance of acquired tntitr— the various scopes of our analyses are amenable to many of the concerns of evolutionary theorists in the natural sdences. As we constructed this ontological approach to the building envelope, we have avoided proceeding with a single classification of species, opting to analyze the subject through four different perspectives: typological, functional, elementary, and organizational.
类型学:集合和外壳的物种形成 TYPOLOGY: ASSEMBLAGES AND THE SPECIATION OF THE ENVELOPE
我们从类型学范围开始分析，试图对自 19 世纪末以来发展起来的建筑围护结构的不断扩大的类型进行分类。通过这种类型学方法，我们首先创建了一个通过一系列微观历史构建的围护结构组合的分类法，其中我们分析了建筑围护结构技术相对于其不断变化的环境的演变。该分类法确定了九个在其对应生态中铭刻的包覆组合;也就是说，政治、经济或符号学。该分类法包括幕墙、双层玻璃、全玻璃、预制混凝土、屏蔽、拉伸、介质、植被和动态围护结构。
这些组合的共同点是一条进化路径，涉及广泛的社会文化和政治过程。他们每个人都围绕着一条进化路径，这条路径会改变环境的变化。有些，如幕墙或雨幕，是基于其无处不在和变革能力;其他的，如双层立面，是反复尝试的奢侈实验，尽管它们未能获得相关的市场份额。有些人通过经济或生活方式的改变获得成功，例如全玻璃环境或媒体外墙。这些物种的进化与推动它们形成过程的环境力量有关。
We began our analysis with a typological scope in an attempt to classify the expanding typologies of building envelopes that have developed since the end of the 19th century. With this typological approach, we first created a taxonomy of envelope assemblages constructed through a series of micro-histories in which we analyzed the evolution of building envelope technologies in respect to their changing environment. The taxonomy identifies nine envelope assemblages inscribed within their coresponding ecologies; that is, political, economic, or semiotic. This taxonomy includes curtain wall, double glass, all-glass, precast concrete, screened, tensile, media, vegetated, and kinetic envelopes.
What these assemblages have in common is an evolutionary path which involves a broad range of socio-cultural and political processes. Each one of them gravitates around an evolutionary path, which tradks changes in the environment. Some, such as curtain walls or rainscreens, are grounded on their ubiquity and transformative capacity; others, such as double façades, are extravagant experiments that are repeatedly attempted, despite their failure to gain a relevant share of the market. Some achieve success through economics or changes in lifestyle, like all-glass environments or media facades. The evolution of these species tradcs the environmental forces that drove the processes through which they came into bei
功能:环境性能和外壳的目的论 FUNCTION: ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCES AND THE TELEOLOGY OF THE ENVELOPE
类型学分类似乎不足以产生建筑围护结构的本体论。除了对不同种类的包络进行分析和描述之外，还需要构建将它们连接在一起的基质，Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire称之为“计划和构图的统一”。为了让信封的本体论变得有效，我们需要画出一个能够超越物种的信封的抽象图。第一次尝试是将研究范围转移到功能分析，即对物种的目的论分析，这将使我们能够通过了解包膜性能的演变将 spedes 与它们的环境联系起来。我们的环境和进化观点不仅意味着用更有效的物质组合概念取代旧的物质概念，而且还需要考虑包络与自然元素的人工重建。
The typological classification appeared insufficient to produce an ontology of the building envelope.Beyond the analysis and description of the different species of envelopes, it was necessary to construct the substrate that links them together, what Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire would have called “the unity of the plan and oomposition.”For an ontology of the envelope to become effective we needed to draw an abstract diagram of the envelope capable of transcending the species. A first attempt was made by shifting the scope of the research to a functional analysis, a teleological analysis of the species which would allow us to relate the spedes to their environments by way of understanding the evolution of the envelope’s performances. Our environmental and evolutionary perspective not only implies the replacement of the old notions of material by the more effective concept of material assemblage but it also requires the consideration of envelopes vis-à-vis the artificial reconstruction ofnatural elements.
水、空气、热、光，甚至生物质等元素现在都被现代技术重新设计成人造宇宙学的新领域，该领域本质上是政治负载的：空气已成为政治战场，传统的水政治现在与上涨的水纠缠在一起全球变暖和碳排放、能源消耗以及碳和氨循环引发的水平现已成为地缘政治进程的核心。
嵌入在围护结构中的大多数表演都与建筑物能够限制、扭曲和引导自然元素流动以实现环境（进而政治）代理的方式有关。人们很难想象建筑在人类世中要解决的任务比获得决定性的环境和生态作用更重要。我们重点关注围护结构在自然元素管理及其在 20 世纪的演变方面的表现：空气、水、能源、光是我们关注的核心。为了构建描述这些元素的人造宇宙论的历史变迁的叙述，我们确定了决定建筑围护结构的宇宙政治性能演变的五种相关性能：透明性、隔热性、气密性、水密性和经济性。这些性能可以扩展到包括生物量比率、气流感应或反射率等主题，我们确信这些性能很快就会变得重要，但它们在建筑围护结构建设方面的历史仍然太短，并且难以纳入到建筑围护结构中。建筑围护结构的当代本体论。
Elements such as water, ait, heat, light, and even biomass are now redesigned by contemporary technologies into a new field of artificial cosmologies that are essentially politically loaded: air has become a political battlefield, traditional hydro-politics are now entangled with rising water levels triggered by global warming and carbon emissions, and energy consumption and the carbon and ammonia cycles have now become central to geopolitical processes.
Most of the performances embedded within the envelope relate to the way in which a building is capable of delimiting, distorting, and oonducting flows of natural elements to attain environmental— and therefore political— agency. One can hardly imagine a more relevant task for architecture to address in the Anthropocene than to attain decisive environmental and eoological agency. We have focused on the performances of the envelope in respect to the management of natural elements and their evolution during the 20th century: air, water, energy, light, are at the core of our concems. In order to construct the narratives that describe the historical vicissitudes of the artificial cosmologies of these elements, we have identified five relevant performances that have dictated the evolution of the building envelope’s cosmaopolitical performance: transparency, insulation, airtightness, watertightness, and economy. These performances could be expanded to include subjects like biomass ratios, airflow induction, or reflectivity, and we are sure that these performances will soon become important, but their history in respect to the construction of building envelopes is still too short and resists inorporation into a contemporary ontology of the building envelope.
元素:外壳中的组件和微进化 ELEMENT: COMPONENTS AND MICROEVOLUTIONS IN THE ENVELOPE
如果围护结构的性能暗示了建筑围护结构与其环境之间的功能关系，那幺将建筑围护结构分析为部件的集合是很重要的，同时又不排除对每个物种的任何目的论推理。虽然许多当代建筑围护结构系统都是作为零件套件建造的，但也有一些高度专业化的围护结构组合，其中零件是组合所独有的。包络中部分与整体之间的关系对于特定组合的进化潜力至关重要。正如我们所看到的，在一个更加综合的组合中，所有组件都符合居维叶的各部分之间的相关性原理，进化的潜力比各部分对整体的依赖性较低或部分之间的相关性较弱的情况要有限得多。因此，对围护结构的主要特征（受制于独立的演化过程）的分析是我们针对建筑围护结构的本体论考虑的第三种分析模式。
If the envelope’s performances imply a functional relationship between building envelopes and their environments, itis important to analyze building envelopes as an assembly of parts without precluding any teleological condusion for every one of the species. While many contemporary building envelope systems have been constructed as kits of parts, there are also some highly spedalized envelope assemblages where the parts are unique to the assemblage. The relationship between the parts and the whole in the envelope is crucial to the evolutionary potential of a particular assemblage. As we have seen, in a more integrated assemblage where all the components are in compliance with Cuvier’s principle of correlationbetween parts, the potential for evolution is much more limited than the cases where the parts are less dependent on the wholeor there is a weaker correlation between parts. Therefore, the analysis ofthe envelope’s primary oomponents (as subject to independent evolutionary processes) is the third mode of analysis which we have considered for this ontology of the building envelope.
虽然建筑围护结构一直由砖块、方石、瓷砖或瓦片等部件组成，但现代围护结构开发了某些类型的组件，这些组件更适合新的组装逻辑以及生产和建筑模式。我们选择在竖框、接缝和膜上放置的三个组件存在于早期的建筑结构形式中，但在上个世纪经历了重大进步。这三个围护结构构件的发展与幕墙等轻质围护结构系统等新的装配模式有关，遵循表演性稀疏化和大规模拼板化的逻辑。这在皮肤（接缝）之间的连接处、与下部结构的连接（竖框）或能够通过层（膜）进行防风雨组合的系统的开发中产生了前所未有的复杂性。同样，这些元素的构造挑战了达西立体建筑，并遵循更轻的建筑谱系，更类似于帐篷或其他与织物相关的建筑。这些调制解调器包络组件技术的发展生动地说明了新材料生态的结合及其兼容性，有时是通过光荣的胜利，有时是通过惨痛的失败。
While building envelopes have always been made of parts-be it bricks, ashlars, tiles, or shingles-modern envelopes developed certain types of components that were more appropriate to new assemblage logics and modes of production and construction. The three components which we have chosen to foaus on mullions, joints, and membranes-existed in earlier forms of building construction but have undergone significant advances over the last century. The development of these three envelope components is related to new assembly modes such as curtain walls and other light envelope systems, following a logic of performative rarefaction and large-scale panelization. This has produced unprecedented complexities at the junctures between panels (joints), the connection to substructures(mullions), or in the development of systems able toweatherproof assemblages through layers (membranes). Again, the tectonics of these elements defy dassical stereotomic architecture and follow a much lighter construction lineage, more akin to tents or other fabric-related buildings. The development of the technologies of these modem envelope components illustrates a vivid account of the incorporation of new material ecologies and their compatibilities, sometimes through glorious victories but also through abject failures.
组织:集合逻辑和信封的基本构造 ORGANIZATION: ASSEMBLY LOGICS AND THE FOUNDATIONAL TECTONICS OF ENVELOPES
如果这些成分可以与生物学中的器官有关，那幺它们的组织可能类似于Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire和居维叶使用的术语中的“组成计划”。从这个意义上说，我们可能对新生的建筑围护结构胚胎学提出的一个问题是，建筑围护结构之间是否存在统一的组成。我们发起了与居维叶和杰弗罗伊在1830年左右所支持的论点类似的论点，关于动物物种组成的统一性，提出了关于建筑围护结构物种的谱系以及它们是否可能与单一计划一致的问题。在装配系统一章中，我们勾勒出现代建筑围护结构中我们认为与当代技术特别相关的两种基本血统或装配模式：分层和单元化。
If these components can be related to organs in biology, their organization may be analogous to the”plan of composition,”in the terms used by Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire and Cuvier. In this sense, one of the questions we may pose to the nascent embryology of the building envelope is whether there is a unity of composition across building envelopes. We have initiated a similar argument to the one sustained by Cuvier and Geoffroy around 1830, regarding the unity of composition in animal species, posing the same questions about the lineages of building envelope species and whether they may or may not be rendered consistent with a single plan. In the assembly systems chapter we have sketched two basic lineages or modes of assembly in modern building envelopes that we consider particularly relevant to contemporary technologies: layering and unitization.
自 19 世纪末以来，建筑围护结构技术不仅受到钢筋混凝土、浮法玻璃、铝和塑料等新材料的影响，还受到其组装逻辑的影响。在该学科的历史建构中，零件的堆叠（立体技术）已经胜过其他装配方式，尽管当代的围护结构技术很少使用堆放作为装配系统。幕墙系统和膜结构在当代装配模式中占主导地位，不仅包含构成大部分当代围护结构的新型合成材料（如聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料、Tyvek、Kalzip 或 Dryvit），还包含构成建筑行业结构的社会和经济结构。现代围护结构由密封在接缝处的单元化系统（如幕墙）或分层膜（如住宅围护结构）组装而成。拼板和分层是最重要的组装技术，前者结合了工业生产和劳动组织的优化方案，后者通过连续的层结合了多种性能。传统建筑的构造秩序发生了重大变化，需要新的表达形式来明确当代技术的可能性。
The technologies of building envelopes have been crucially shaped not only by new materials that have become available since the end of the 19th century, such as reinforced concrete, float glass, aluminum, and plastics, but also by their assembly logics. Within the historical construction of the discipline, the stacking of parts (stereotomic technologies) have prevailed over other modes of assembly, despite the fact that contemporary technologies of the envelope rarely use piling as an assembly system. Curtain-wall systems and membrane construction prevail among contemporary modes of assembly, incorporating not only the new synthetic materials that compose most of the contemporary envelope (such as Styrofoam, Tyvek, Kalzip, or Dryvit), but also thesocial and economic structures that constitute the fabric of the building industry. Contemporary envelopes are assembled either by unitized systems sealed off at the joints (as in curtain walls) or layered membranes (as in residential envelopes).Panelization and layering are the most significant assembly techniques, the former incorporating the optimization schemes of industrial production and the organization of labor, and the latter incorporating multiple performances through successive layers. The tectonic orders of traditional architecture have mutated significantly and new forms of expression are necessary to make the contemporary technical possibilities explicit.
走向一种新的环境本体论 TOWARD A NEW ONTOLOGY OF ENVELO PES
虽然对建筑围护结构、表皮和立面的感知传统上一直受到相对主义、解释和偶然性的困扰，但我们认为建筑围护结构已经进入了一个新阶段，必须构建新的本质。后现代主义对真理和证据的攻击最恶毒的莫过于对建筑物外墙的攻击，从此，建筑物一直处于纪律的边缘，没有对错之分。丹尼尔·丹尼特（Daniel Dennett）的话在其他地方更适用：
后现代主义，这个“思想”学派宣称“没有真理，只有解释”在很大程度上是荒谬的，但它留下了一代人文学科的学者，因为他们对真理的不信任和对证据的不尊重，满足于“对话”，其中没有人是错的，没有什幺可以证实的， 只用你能鼓起的任何风格断言。
While the perception of the building envelope, the skin, and the façade have been traditionally plagued byrelativism, interpretation, and contingency, we believe that the building envelope has entered a new stage where new essences have to be constructed. Nowhere was the postmodernist assault on truth and evidence more virulent than on the façades of buildings, which have henceforth been left in a disciplinary limbo, where nothing is right or wrong. Nowhere else are the words of Daniel Dennett more applicable:
Postmodernism, the school of “thought”that proclaimed “There are no truths, only interpretations”has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for “conversations”in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.
因此，这项工作是建筑围护结构的“回归本体论”;摆脱当前的纪律僵局。建筑围护结构具有热透射率、透明度和泄漏率、重量、成本和许多其他后果。对于他们的居民和整个世界来说，无论它们的风格和他们所指的对话如何，它们都有好有坏，重要的是重新创建我们可以构建证据和区分它们的标准。我们知道，我们不能再依赖旧的构造本体论，但如果没有新的本体论，我们将被困在观赏学和现象学之间。尽管我们很早就认识到文化价值在对建筑围护结构的理解、评估甚至经验中起作用，但相对主义只有在面对全球环境灾难时才具有一定的价值。
This work is, therefore, a “return to an ontology”of the building envelope; an escape from the current disciplinary impasse. Building envelopes have thermal transmittance, transparency and leakcage rates, weight, costs, and many other consequences. They are better and worse, for their inhabitants and for the world at large, regardless of their style and the conversations they refer to, and it is important to re-establish the criteria by which we can construct evidence and discern between them. We know that we can no longer rely on the old tectonic ontologies, but without a new ontology we will remain trapped between the ornamental and the phenomenological. Despite our earlier recognition of the cultural values at play in the understanding, valuation, and even experience of the building envelope, that relativism can only be of a certain value in the face of a global environmental catastrophe.
联合国环境规划署估计，建筑物（而非建筑）的碳排放量占所有碳排放量的三分之一。随着政策制定者、实体和普通民众越来越关注环境退化，建筑师现在将建筑视为该学科的生存问题，而不是一个不幸的附带过程，这一点至关重要。也就是说，我们新本体论的探究，大多是基于对材料科学与工程领域所阐释的“建筑”而非“建筑”的定量表现的定量关注。例如，水泥化学的新生发展揭示了与建筑师关注点平行的重要存在问题的侵入。虽然卡恩希望与有自我意识的砖块进行一次诚实的、甚至是虚构的对话，谈论他们的构图欲望，但建筑师现在必须询问水泥的碱活化程度和嵌入的能量或二氧化碳排放。建筑围护结构的当代技术所呈现的竞争领域是一个将材料性能和实际生存问题和威胁交织在一起的领域。
As stated earlier, the following chapters are a non-comprehensive attempt to construct this new ontology from four different perspectives: the typological; the performative; the elementary; and the compositional. The further we deepen this inquiry into these new ontological horizons for the building envelope, the more we will have realized the complexity of the questions to be asked. Yet, like any other ontological undertaking, it remains just a work in progress.
如前所述，以下各章是从四个不同角度构建这一新本体论的非全面尝试：类型论;表演性;小学;和构图。我们越深入地探究建筑围护结构的这些新的本体论视野，我们就越能意识到要提出的问题的复杂性。然而，像任何其他本体论事业一样，它仍然只是一项正在进行的工作。
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