"In the fold of a drape lies the whole of Rome," wrote the philosopher Anne Cauquelin (often quoted in AA) around the same time in her Essai de philosophie urbaine (PUF, 1982). Whether in the assembly of a wooden post, the grooves of a die-cast concrete, the joinery from a field of salvaged iron, sometimes lies the entire intent of a project. "Anywhere, at any time, architecture, expert or ordinary, can shake us out of our torpor," says Éric Lapierre in this issue. An architectural element, a constructive detail or a simple pattern not only have immense evocative power, but sometimes can also compose what the French architect calls "the marvelous element, from which we can deconstruct the entire poetic logic of the project." This issue of AA explores some of these details, which underpin or embody all the poetry of their buildings, and which can only come from a non-artificial intelligence, that of the architect.
