Finishing in Architecture

Polishing, Completing, Ending

Paul Emmons (Virginia Tech, USA), Marcia Feuerstein, Negar Goljan

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English

Routledge
30 June 2025

Theory of architecture; Architectural structure & design; History of architecture; Civil engineering, surveying & building

Finishing in Architecture: Polishing, Completing, Ending explores the topic of finishing and the fascinating physical and metaphysical implications of its various conceptions in architecture. Finishing is essential to all human practices and concepts of time, yet simultaneously it is largely impossible to identify an entirely finished state of being. As mortals, we organize our worlds into beginnings and endings, starts and finishes. Architecture’s temporality, however, may contain something of both the mortal and immortal within it – a desire for permanence combined with lamentation over its impossibility.

While many approaches to finishing construct two opposed ontological conditions (the finished and the unfinished), this dualistic ploy neglects the complexity of architectural practice, cultural reception, and historiographic shifts in semiotics during the lifetime of a building. More nuanced approaches are examined in this collection of 38 essays and creative works from a diverse group of scholars, architects, and artists who conceptualize finishing not simply as a final outcome, but as an extended action, a mood that presumes an end is near, all the while working continuously toward (but never achieving) completion. It is here that the concept of finishing is not a state of being but a state of becoming, as an active thickening of time when the end is thought to be imminent but not yet attained. Finishing, more than a final endpoint, is a void state that is extended through efforts framing its territory, while never quite containing it.

From the material to the procedural and the conceptual, this volume explores the practices of finishing in architecture within three currents: surfaces, projects, and most broadly, architectural times. It will be of interest to students and instructors of architecture and design, architectural historians, and other scholars.

Edited by: Paul Emmons (Virginia Tech USA), Marcia Feuerstein, Negar Goljan
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 246mm, Width: 174mm,
Weight: 770g
ISBN: 9781032722184
ISBN 10: 1032722185
Pages: 302
Publication Date: 30 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Editors Paul Emmons is a registered architect and the Patrick and Nancy Lathrop Professor of Architecture at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech, where he directs the PhD program in Architecture + Design Research. His research on architecture drawing practices includes the book Drawing Imagining Building. Marcia Feuerstein is a registered architect and Professor of Architecture Emerita at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. Her research investigates links between theory, practice, and performance in architecture. One of her recent publications is Expanding Field of Architecture. Negar Goljan is a Visiting Assistant Professor at James Madison University School of Art, Design and Art History and a PhD Candidate in Architecture + Design Research at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. Her research considers poetics in architecture, specifically atmospheric drawings of Étienne-Louis Boullée. Associate Editor Camila Mancilla is an architect and PhD candidate in Architecture + Design Research at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech studying architecture representation through collage, multi-media, and architectural fragments. Her research focuses on cutting in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark.