Versioning : Connubial Reciprocities

Ponce de leon, Monica, and Tehrani, Nader

The work of Office dA seems to mitigate rifts of Surface | Space relationships.  Based on both rationalist and empirical methods, the firm exposes unavoidable construction dilemmas (opportunity) as generators of form. Blurring the work of H + dM and Ghery, Office dA strikes to find comprimise between development of skin and the formal consequence of manipulation of skin.  Analog to both the figure ground manipulation of poche or Le Corbusier's objectification of spatial definition, Office dA's work can be seen as an expressive articulation of constraints and structural exploitation.  Using the alibi of Polyglotomy, or incorrect primacy, the firm creates a rational argument for their tectonic expression.

Within the context of expression, the reading suggest dishonesty between idea (language) and reality (syntax). Office dA's Witte Arts Building exposes the impurity of modern day construction techniques.  Akin to Khan's Exeter library, the expression of the modular unit is evocative of the bricks structural limitations and capabilities.

This expression of surface can be seen as using the tectonics of a modular to derive space.  Referencing the Yokohama Port Terminal as the purest (to date) attempt to absorb programmatic and archi-tectonic constraints into form, a pure space is left uncompromised.