Page 98 - Between light and shade

between light and shade, TRANSPARENCy and reflection

Pins, tenons and mortices, nails, screws, bolts
or rivets link the rigid components made from
wood, synthetic materials or metal, layered on
top of each other by means of a plane forming a
permeable joint. One of the components always
casts a shadow line on the other, due to its thic-
kness. Components that are too thin, metal sheets
in particular, distort and result in mechanical
assemblies that cannot be dismantled (such as
rivets) and are as unattractive as they are tran-
sient 11, with streaky and irregular shadows: this
is where there is a need to brace them or weld
them together.

A joint is of a completely different kind where
it relates to two components attached to a third,
which is generally thin or very thin: the “cladding”.

The skill lies in making the joint invisible,
without a shadow, as is the case with strips of
wallpaper hung side by side on a plastered wall
or marble slabs placed alongside each other on a
mortar bed (on a floor or wall).

The joint must be a few millimetres to a cen-
timetre wide in the case of ceramic tiles, in order
to negotiate the less precise dimensions both in
plan and thickness, the shadow there is diffuse.

11 The same is not true of the assembly of panels for cars, boats
or planes built in workshops with great precision.
98