The AJs Architects Working Details were first published in 1953. Originally written by Colin Boyne, they ran to a series of 15 classic black-bound volumes. After a long lull, they were revived in 1988 by Sue Dawson, in an occasional series that continued until the early 2000s. Consisting of a selection of details originating from the building studies published in the AJ at the time, Dawson re-drew and re-scaled the drawings many by hand to fit the pages of the AJ, with constituent components clearly annotated.Almost 20 years on, were very pleased to be bringing the series back, with the first edition published in December featuring a round-up of details published in AJ Specification case studies over the past five years. They have been organised in five sections: faades and cladding; doors and windows; kitchens and bathrooms; roofing and drainage and, finally, walls, ceilings and partitions.The buildings werent especially chosen on their aesthetic merits, but more to demonstrate a range of typologies and scales across the country. And, as with previous versions, this first series is intended to offer a collation of ideas about detailing.AdvertisementEach detail most previously published but some never seen before has been re-edited so the drawings look consistent throughout. They are accompanied by project data and the issue of AJ Specification that the building appeared in for reference, together with some images and a short description authored by the designers of each building.In total we present 28 projects across five sections, which, while not a comprehensive primer, are intended to offer a good comparative range of approaches to key areas of construction. Although some details chosen demonstrate relatively new techniques, the majority refine tried-and-tested methods of making buildings.The overarching aim remains the same as before, however: to enable and encourage those working in the built environment to share information on solving problems in design.Over the next five weeks, we'll be putting up one of the five sections, with this week the focus on faades and cladding.Purchase a printed copy of AJ Working Details hereor read the full issue onlinePocket House by Tikari WorksTimber screen faadePhotos: Edmund SumnerPocket House in East Dulwich, south London, is the first built project by Tikari Works. The practice acted as client, architect and main contractor, directly employing a team of craftsmen and subcontractors to deliver the project.AdvertisementFormerly the site of a domestic garage, the total area of the project measures no more than 82m2. Arranged over two levels above ground and one level below, the house consists of two double bedrooms plus living and dining spaces. The layout is upside-down, with bedrooms on the basement level looking out to a sunken planted courtyard.Kitchen and dining spaces are on the ground floor and the more open living area on the first floor. The scheme eschews traditional white plasterboard walls, aiming instead for a raw, hand-crafted feel, imbued with richness of structure, proportion and light.Externally, the building volume steps and folds to align with the street line and to comply with local planning restrictions. To help harmonise these various articulations, the front is cloaked in a timber screen, with no visible fixings. This borrows its language from the wooden garages and garden sheds typical of backland plots, deployed here in a more sculptural manner.The screen also helps to balance the often-conflicting calls for both daylight and privacy and has been made using standard timber sizes and assembled using simple carpentry.Read more hereLocation: London SE22 | Completion: April 2018 | Gross internal floor area: 105m | Structural engineer: Built Engineers | Main contractor: Tikari Works | AJ Specification issue: March 2019Sunderland City Hall by FaulknerBrowns ArchitectsReconstituted stone claddingPhoto: Hufton + CrowSunderland City Hall was at the heart of a 500 million regeneration project that aimed to transform the city centre. Located on the site of a former brewery, the brief from Sunderland City Council (SCC) was to develop a new civic office, integrating various departments into an environment that would enable new ways of working and to create opportunities for community engagement.City Hall combines public and private uses in a welcoming and inspiring environment. The building provides office accommodation for SCC, the Department of Work and Pensions, Gentoo (Sunderlands registered social landlord) and Sunderland College, with further space available to let.The offices are arranged in open floorplates around a light-filled atrium, with visual connections encouraging collaboration between the previously disconnected workforce. A publicly accessible ground floor includes the council chamber, a customer service centre and a caf.The building sits as a backdrop to Sunderlands conservation area. In response, the practice composed a restrained exterior, reflecting the palette of its context while also creating somewhere open and transparent to engage with the city.The faades employ a traditional hierarchy of a defined base, middle and parapet, derived from the Classical orders of Sunderlands historic city centre. At ground level, reconstituted stone-clad columns and beams create a civic presence, with generous glazing to make a strong connection between public realm and community spaces inside. At the upper levels, extended aluminium profiles are held off the faade to provide rhythm and shading. The level of shading and the density of the solid aluminium panels respond to the buildings orientation to help control solar heat gain, alongside solar control glass. Robust PPC coatings to the aluminium protect it from Sunderlands marine environment.Read more hereLocation: Sunderland | Completion: November 2021 | Gross internal floor area: 17,880m | Structural engineer: Cundall | Main contractor: Bowmer and Kirkland | AJ Specification issue: February 2023Leeds Playhouse by Page\ParkConcrete piers and bespoke ceramic panelsPhotos: Jim StephensonThe Leeds Playhouse was reconfigured and extended to create a new face for the organisation and improve accessibility in 2019.The new frontage created on St Peters Street turned the theatre around to face the city centre, providing a new entrance and caf at street level. A faade of brightly coloured ceramics creates a strong visual identity that reflects the creativity and diversity of activity within the building.Along with the reworking of the two main theatre spaces to increase seating capacity and enhance access, a flexible performance space was created through the re-use of an existing basement. Improvements in access extend throughout the building to better connect the Playhouse with the streetscape on St Peters Street, the existing entrance on Playhouse Square and the new public space between the theatre and Leeds City College Playhouse Gardens.To enable the form of the new extension to respond well to the materiality, pattern and plan of the existing building, materials with appropriate properties were carefully considered. Precast concrete of the piers and flanking wall panels reference the historical local use of stone in Leeds, allowing the columns to have a sculptural quality solid and deep with tapered planes responding to the relief of existing corbels and roof overhangs.Full-height continuous strips of curtain wall glazing between the concrete and ceramic bays underpin the rhythm of the main faade, dramatising the activity within while carefully controlling solar gain on the south-facing edge. Read more hereLocation: Leeds | Completion: October 2019| Gross internal floor area: 6,450m | Structural engineer: Arup | Main contractor: BAM Construction| AJ Specification issue: March 2020Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road housing by Henley HalebrownHand-laid brickworkPhoto: Nick KaneHenley Halebrown was commissioned in 2015 to design a hybrid building combining a 350-pupil primary school and 68 homes on the site of a former fire station. The 11-storey apartment block protects the three-storey school from the noise and fumes on a busy London street. Its compact plan frees up much of the site for the school and its generous courtyard playground.The school entrance is on the quieter street. Next to this, the hall is lit by a clerestory and marked by a south-facing bench on the street. Here, parents can sit and chat while waiting for their children. Such spaces, rooted into the fabric of the wall, embed social patterns into the architecture, the wall becoming a form of the social infrastructure.The school borrows from the scale and substance of the taller apartment building, which clusters eight dwellings per floor around a central octagonal stair. The plan is symmetrical about a diagonal axis. The shape is moulded and walls pinched to create colonnaded faades corresponding with its peninsula site as it turns towards a diagonal street, a listed crescent and longer views of London.The structure is a concrete frame, combining in-situ and precast elements. Hand-laid, flush-pointed brickwork is combined with precast brick string courses and exposed precast, heavily acid-etched to reveal the texture of aggregate, emphasising the weight and detail of concrete. The predominant red brick takes its cue from the heavy civic buildings located along the street.Brickwork is also detailed to emphasise robustness. The courtyard/playground is faced in a light ivory glazed brick with a variable translucent glaze to illuminate the space. The apartment building and the schools perimeter walls are faced with a slop-moulded, water-struck red brick. The brickwork is detailed to step, facet and curve, accommodating consistent apertures and loggias. The depth reduces overheating and provides private, sheltered outdoor space. Read more hereLocation: London E8| Completion: June 2020| Gross internal floor area: 8,535m | Structural engineer: Techniker| Main contractor: Thornsett Structures| AJ Specification issue: March 2021The Observatory, Graveney School by Urban Projects BureauLightweight mesh claddingPhoto: Kilian O'SullivanThis building provides 12 new classrooms and external walkways, terraces and a rooftop observatory, designed for external teaching, informal events, star-watching and astronomy. A timber stairwell links the new building to an existing study centre and includes a specially designed chandelier, which students can code to represent the solar system and constellations.The Observatory is Urban Projects Bureaus second building at Graveney School and was part of a wider masterplan for the school campus. It sits at the centre of the school, adjacent to the Grade II-listed, 19th century Furzedown House, the 20th century Red House and the Brutalist school hall by Leonard Manasseh.Using the eclectic mix of surrounding buildings as inspiration, the practice has designed a building that appears simultaneously lightweight and solid. The massing is a triple-block composition with a tiered roofline. Externally, it provides a new gathering place with an accessible ramp cutting through the buildings centre to create a double-storey void. Constructed from cross-laminated timber, the building aimed to set a precedent for high-quality, low budget, sustainable education buildings, and appeared in the Mayor of Londons Design For A Circular Economy Primer.Designed to be naturally ventilated, most classrooms are double or triple-aspect, enabling cross-ventilation and stack ventilation through rooflights. All the spaces are naturally lit throughout the day, reducing the need for electric lighting, and solar gain is regulated by mesh cladding on the south faade.A lightweight mesh cladding also serves to enclose the external walkways and external classroom, while allowing light, air and views through the spaces and across the campus. The mesh appears differently in different conditions; sometimes solid, sometimes translucent there and not there. Read more hereLocation: London SW17| Completion: September 2019| Gross internal floor area: 790m | Structural engineer: Michael Barclay Partnership| Main contractor: Quinn London| AJ Specification issue: March 2021Crystal Palace Park Caf by Chris Dyson ArchitectsTimber shinglesPhotos: Peter LandersThe brief for the Crystal Palace Park Caf was for a caf and community room set within the Grade II-listed park. The building is arranged over two storeys to mediate between different immediate levels in the landscape. The caf is on the ground floor, opening out onto a new terrace, while the community room on the first floor is accessed directly from a lakeside path, giving it 270 views across the park and lake.The building is clad in half-round cedar shingles, a reference to the scaled skin of the Grade I-listed dinosaur sculptures at the other side of the lake. Being natural timber, the shingles bed the building down in the leafy open space of the park.The building is orientated perpendicular to the parks central axis, located at a key point that allows, for the first time, an access-for-all-connection between the central axis and the lakeside path. Additional pathways and planting help frame the building and terrace in the surrounding landscape, with deciduous trees chosen to provide strong autumnal colour and a visual connection to the existing surrounding trees.The clients budget was limited, considering the buildings program. The practice assembled tried-and-trusted construction methods that were familiar to contractors, so that they could keep within budget. The most important material decision was with respect to the skin of the building.Cedar shingles had several advantages over other tile systems: being low-cost and easily cut into a half-round shape. Other self-finished materials were used where possible, to complement the character of the shingles and to reduce processes and costs. The galvanised steel used for bridge and rainwater goods will also age well.Read more hereLocation: London SE20| Completion: April 2019 | Gross internal floor area: 323m | Structural engineer: The Morton Partnership| Main contractor: Lengard| AJ Specification issue: February 2022