Includes bibliographical references and index.

Framing enclosures. Cladding the Palazzo Lavoro: Pier Luigi Nervi and "The Borderline Between Decoration and Structure" / Thomas Leslie -- The United Nations Secretariat, Its Glass Facades and Air-conditioning, 1947-1950 / Joseph M. Siry -- Assembling constructions. Bill Hajjar's Air-Wall: A Mid-Twentieth Century Four-Sided Double Skin Facade / Ute Poerschke and Mahyar Hadighi -- Enclosure as Ecological Apparatus: Biosphere 2's "Human Experiment" / Meredith Sattler.

Architecture and technology.

"Constructing Building Enclosures investigates and interrogates tensions between the disciplines of architecture and engineering as they wrestled with technology and building cultures that evolved to deliver structures in the modern era. At the center of this history are inventive architects, engineers and projects that did not settle for conventional solutions, technologies and methods. Comprised of twelve original essays by interdisciplinary scholars, this collection offers a critical look at the development and the purpose of building technology within a design framework. Through two distinct sections, the contributions first challenge notions of the boundaries between architecture, engineering and construction. The authors then investigate twentieth-century building projects exploring technological and aesthetic boundaries of post-war modernism, uncovering lessons relevant to enclosure design that are typically overlooked. Projects include Louis Kahn's Weiss House, Minoru Yamasaki's Science Center, Sigurd Lewerentz's Chapel of Hope, and more. An important read for students, educators, and researchers within architectural history, construction history, building technology and design, this volume sets out to disrupt common assumptions of how we understand this history"-- Provided by publisher.