ABSTRACT
Among all the elements of architecture, the building envelope plays a key role in defining the relationship between the surrounding environment and the articulation of interior spatiality. Considered to be the oldest and most fundamental architectural element, the envelope embodies the separation between inside and outside, the natural and the artificial. The postmodern study of architectural typologies with its tendency to privilege form has moved on to extensive research of programmatic hybridization in late postmodernism as evidence by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Plan and section are traditionally considered to be vehicles to communicate the organization and political dimensions of the architecture and it’s interior. The modern "machine for living" represents not only the functionalist response to the problem of architectural form; it also embodies its material strata. Difference in temperature, humidity, light condition, and sometimes even pressure is what makes the interior controlled environment of architecture different from the surrounding environment.
