Configurations of the architectural envelope

The architectural envelope is the place where a great number of technological and functional experiments are now concentrated and expressed, put there with the aim of achieving an increasingly high quality of performance in terms of comfort and energy-saving, as well as formal display of contemporary aesthetics. Investigation of the process which guides the arrangement of elements within a composition qualifies as a useful contribution for clarifying and focusing on the reasons for these choices. The essential task is therefore to examine the relationship between content and form, interpretation and representation of the cultural context in which the architectural object is set, with the objective of bringing out the spatial conceptions on which the various ideas of architecture are based, which, one after another through the course of history, contradicting or grafting onto one another, lead us to an awareness of the meanings that architectural designs represent in the present day.