Kenneth Frampton

RAPPEL  À  L’ORDRE:  THE  CASE  FOR  THE  TECTONIC

Owing to the generosity of Kenneth Frampton, noted theorist and and professor of architecture, we are hon-
ored to place one of his famous essays as an introduction year edition of Defining the Architectural Space
– Durability and Fleetingness of architecture.

I have elected to address the issue of tectonic of man, is an obvious example and one which in its
form for a number of reasons, not least of which turn reflects the distortion of the human microcosm
is the current tendency to reduce architecture to from the spirituall [1].
scenography. This reaction arises in response to Against this prospect of cultural degeneration, we
the universal triumph of Robert Venturi’s decorated may turn to certain rear-guard positions, in order to
shed; that all too prevalent syndrome in which shel- recover a basis from which to resist. Today we find
ter is packaged like a giant commodity. Among the ourselves in a similar position to that of the critic
advantages of the scenographic approach is the fact Clement Greenberg who, in his 1965 essay ‘Modern-
that the results are eminently amortizable, with all ist Painting’, attempted to reformulate a ground for
the consequences that this entails for the future of painting in the following terms:
the environment. We have in mind, of course, not Having been denied by the Enlightenment of all
the pleasing decay of nineteenth-century Romanti- tasks they could take seriously, they [the arts] looked
cism but the total destitution of commodity culture. as though they were going to be assimilated to en-
Along with this sobering prospect goes the general tertainment pure and simple, and entertainment itself
dissolution of stable references in the late-modern looked as though it was going to be assimilated, like
world; the fact that the precepts governing almost religion, to therapy.
every discourse, save for the seemingly autono- The arts could save themselves from this leveling
mous realm of techno-science, have now become down only by demonstrating that the kind of experi-
extremely tenuous. Much of this was already fore- ence they provided was valuable in its own right, and
seen half a century ago by Hans Sedlmayr, when not to be obtained from any other kind of activity [2].
he wrote, in 1941: If one poses the question as to what might be
The shift of man’s spiritual centre of gravity towards a comparable ground for architecture, then one must
the inorganic, his feeling of his way into the inorganic turn to a similar material base, namely that architec-
world, may indeed legitimately be called a cosmic ture must of necessity be embodied in structural and
disturbance in the microcosm of man, who now begins constructional form. My present stress on the latter
to show a one-sided development of his faculties. At rather than the prerequisite of spatial enclosure,
the other extreme there is a disturbance of macrocos- stems from an attempt to evaluate twentieth-century
mic relationships, a result of the especial favour and architecture in terms of continuity and inflection rather
protection which the inorganic now enjoys – almost than in terms of originality as an end in itself.
always at the expense, not to say ruin, of the organic. In his 1980 essay ‘Avant-Garde and Continuity’,
The raping and destruction of the earth, the nourisher the Italian architect Giorgio Grassi had the following
 21

comment to make about the impact of avant-gardist Perhaps the most balanced assessment of Grassi has
art on architecture: been made by the Catalan critic lgnasi Solà Morales,
... as far as the vanguards of the Modern Movement when he wrote:
are concerned, they invariably follow in the wake of Architecture is posited as a craft, that is to say, as
the figurative arts Cubism, Supremalism, Neoplasti- the practical application of established knowledge
cism, etc., are all forms of investigation born and through rules of the different levels of intervention.
developed in the realm of the figurative arts, and only Thus, no notion of architecture as problem-solving,
as a second thought carried over into architecture as as innovation, or as invention ex novo, is present in
well. It is actually pathetic to see the architects of that Grassi’s thinking, since he is interested in showing
‘heroic’ period and the best among them, trying with the permanent, the evident, and the given character
difficulty to accommodate themselves to these ‘isms’; of knowledge in the making of architecture.
experimenting in a perplexed manner because of their …The work of Grassi is born of a reflection upon
fascination with the new doctrines, measuring them, the essential resources of discipline, and it focuses
only later to realize their ineffectuality... [3]. upon specific media which determine not only aes-
While it is disconcerting to have to recognize that thetic choices but also the ethical content of its cul-
there may well be a fundamental break between the tural contribution. Through these channels of ethical
figurative origins of abstract art and the construc- and political will, the concern of the Enlightenment...
tional basis of tectonic form, it is, at the same time, becomes enriched in its most critical tone. It is not
liberating to the extent that it affords a point from solely the superiority of reason and the analysis of form
which to challenge spatial invention as an end in which are indicated, but rather, the critical role (in the
itself: a pressure to which modern architecture has Kantian sense of the term) that is, the judgement of
been unduly subject. Rather than join in a recapitula- values, the very lack of which is felt in society today...
tion of avant-gardist tropes or enter into historicist In the sense that his architecture is a meta-language,
pastiche or into the superfluous proliferation of a reflection on the contradictions of its own practice,
sculptural gestures – all of which have an arbitrary his work acquires the appeal of something that is both
dimension to the degree that they are based in nei- frustrating and noble... [4].
ther structure nor in construction – we may return The dictionary definition of the term ‘tectonic’
instead to the structural unit as the irreducible es- to mean ‘pertaining to building or construction in
sence of architectural form. general; constructional, constructive used especially
Needless to say, we are not alluding here to in reference to architecture and the kindred arts’, is
mechanical revelation of construction but rather to a little reductive to the extent that we intend not only
a potentially poetic manifestation of structure in the the structural component in se but also the formal am-
original Greek sense of poesis as an act of making plification of its presence in relation to the assembly
and revealing. While I am well aware of the conserva- of which it is a part. From its conscious emergence
tive connotations that may be ascribed to Grassi’s in the middle of the nineteenth century with the writ-
polemic, his critical perceptions none the less cause ings of Karl Bötticher and Gottfried Semper, the term
us to question the very idea of the new, in a moment not only indicates a structural and material probity
that oscillates between the cultivation of a resistant but also a poetics of construction, as this may be
culture and a descent into value-free aestheticism. practised in architecture and the related arts.
22

The Doric Order from Lafever's The Modern Builder’s Guide, 1983. According to Karl Bötticher’s theory the Kunstform is the fluting and the
Kernform is the body of the column
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The beginnings of the Modern, dating back at least the term first appears in Sappho where the tekton,
two centuries, and the much more recent advent of the carpenter, assumes the role of the poet. This
the Post-modern, are inextricably bound up with the meaning undergoes further evolution as the term
ambiguities introduced into Western architecture by passes from being something specific and physi-
the primacy given to the scenographic in the evolu- cal, such as carpentry, to the more generic notion
tion of the bourgeois world. of construction and later to becoming an aspect of
However, building remains essentially tectonic poetry. In Aristophanes we even find the idea that it
rather than scenographic in character and it may is associated with machination and the creation of
be argued that it is first and foremost an act of false things. This etymological evolution would sug-
construction rather than a discourse predicated gest a gradual passage from the ontological to the
on the surface, volume and plan, to cite Le Cor- representational. Finally, the Latin term architectus
busier’s ‘Three Reminders to Architects’. Thus one derives from the Greek archi (a person of authority)
may assert that building is ontological rather than and tekton (a craftsman or builder).
representational in character and that built form is The earliest appearance of the term ‘tectonic’ in
a presence rather than something standing for an English dates from 1656 where it appears in a glos-
absence. In Martin Heidegger’s terminology we may sary meaning ‘belonging to building’, and this is
think of it as a ‘thing’ rather than a ‘sign’. I have cho- almost a century after the first English use of the term
sen to engage with this theme because I believe it architect in 1563. In 1850 the German oriental scholar
is necessary for architects to reposition themselves K. O. Muller was to define the term rather rudely,
given that the predominant tendency today is to as ‘A series of arts which form and perfect vessels,
reduce all architectural expression to the status of implements, dwellings and places of assembly’. The
commodity culture. In as much as such resistance term is first elaborated in a modern sense with Karl
has little chance of being widely accepted, a ‘rear- Bötticher’s The Tectonic of the Hellenes of 1843–52
guard’ posture would seem to be an appropriate and with Gottfried Semper’s essay ‘The Four Ele-
stance to adopt rather than the dubious assumption ments of Architecture’ of the same year. It is further
that it is possible to continue with the perpetuation developed in Semper’s unfinished study, Style in the
of avant-gardism. Despite its concern for structure, Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetic,
an emphasis on tectonic form does not necessarily published between 1863 and 1868.
favour either Constructivism or Deconstructivism. In The term ‘tectonic’ cannot be divorced from the
this sense it is astylistic. Moreover it does not seek technological, and it is this that gives it a certain
its legitimacy in science, literature or art. ambivalence. In this regard it is possible to identify
Greek in origin, the term tectonic derives from the three distinct conditions: 1) the technological object,
term tekton, signifying carpenter or builder. This in which arises directly out of meeting an instrumental
turn stems from the Sanskrit taksan, referring to the need; 2) the scenographic object, which may be
craft of carpentry and to the use of the axe. Remnants used equally to allude to an absent or hidden ele-
of a similar term can also be found in Vedic, where ment; and 3) the tectonic object, which appears in
it refers to carpentry. In Greek it appears in Homer, two modes. We may refer to these modes as the
where it again alludes to carpentry and to the art of ontological and representational tectonic. The first
construction in general. The poetic connotation of involves a constructional element that is shaped so as
24

to emphasize its static role and cultural status. This is experiential limits of our lives. It is arguable that
the tectonic as it appears in Bötticher’s interpretation the practice of architecture is impoverished to the
of the Doric column. The second mode involves the extent that we fail to recognize these transcultural
representation of a constructional element which is values and the way in which they are latent in all
present, but hidden. These two modes can be seen as structural form. Indeed, these forms may serve to
paralleling the distinction that Semper made between remind us, after Heidegger, that inanimate objects
the structural-technical and the structural-symbolic. may also evoke ‘being’, and that through this anal-
Aside from these distinctions, Semper was to di- ogy to our own corpus, the body of a building may
vide built form into two separate material procedures: be perceived as though it were literally a physique.
into the tectonics of the frame, in which members of This brings us back to Semper’s privileging of the
varying lengths are conjoined to encompass a spatial joint as the primordial tectonic element, as the
field; and the stereotomics of compressive mass that, fundamental nexus around which building comes
while it may embody space, is constructed through into being, that is to say, comes to be articulated
the piling up of identical units (the term stereotom- as a presence in itself.
ics deriving from the Greek term for solid, stereos Semper’s emphasis on the joint implies that fun-
and cutting, -tomia). In the first case, the most com- damental syntactical transition may be expressed as
mon material throughout history has been wood or one passes from the stereotomic base to the tectonic
its textual equivalents such as bamboo, wattle and frame, and that such transitions constitute the very
basketwork. In the second case, one of the most essence of architecture. They are the dominant con-
common materials has been brick, or the compressive stituents whereby one culture of building differentiates
equivalent of brick such as rock, stone or rammed itself from the next.
earth and later, reinforced concrete. There have been There is a spiritual value residing in the ‘thingness’
significant exceptions to this division, particularly of the constructed object, so much so that the generic
where, in the interest of permanence, stone has been joint becomes a point of ontological condensation
cut, dressed and erected in such a way as to assume rather than a mere connection. The work of Carlo
the form and function of a frame. Scarpa would seem to exemplify this attribute.
While these facts are so familiar as to hardly need The first volume of the fourth edition of Karl
repetition, we tend to be unaware of the ontological Bötticher’s Tektonik der Hellenen appeared in 1843,
consequences of these differences; that is to say, of the two years after Schinkel’s death in 1841. This pub-
way in which framework tends towards the aerial and lication was followed by three subsequent volumes
the dematerialization of mass, whereas the mass form which appeared at intervals over the next decade,
is telluric, embedding itself ever deeper into the earth. the last appearing in 1852, the year of Semper’s
The one tends towards light and the other towards ‘Four Elements of Architecture’. Bötticher elaborated
dark. These gravitational opposites, the immateriality the concept of the tectonic in a number of signifi-
of the frame and the materiality of the mass, may be cant ways. At one level he envisaged a conceptual
said to symbolize the two cosmological opposites to juncture, which came into being through the ap-
which they aspire: the sky and the earth. propriate interlocking of constructional elements.
Despite our highly secularized techno-scientific Simultaneously articulated and integrated, these
age, these polarities still largely constitute the conjunctions were seen as constituting the body-
 25

form, the Körperbilden of the building that not only sculpture as a plastic art, but with dance and music
guaranteed its material finish, but also enabled this as a cosmic art, as an ontological world-making
function to be recognized as a symbolic form. At art rather than as representational form. Semper
another level, Bötticher distinguished between the regarded such arts as paramount not only because
Kernform or nucleus and the Kunstform or decora- they were symbolic but also because they embodied
tive cladding, the latter having the purpose of rep- man’s underlying erotic-ludic urge to strike a beat,
resenting and symbolizing the institutional status to string a necklace, to weave a pattern, and thus
of the work. According to Bötticher, this shell or to decorate according to rhythmic law.
revetment had to be capable of revealing the in- Semper’s ‘Four Elements of Architecture’ brings
ner essence of the tectonic nucleus. At the same the discussion full circle in as much as Semper added
time Bötticher insisted that one must always try to a specific anthropological dimension to the idea of
distinguish between the indispensable structural form tectonic form. Semper’s theoretical schema constitutes
and its enrichment, irrespective of whether the latter a fundamental break with the 400-year-old humanist
is merely the shaping of the technical elements – as formula of utilitas, firmitas, venustas that first served as
in the case of the Doric column, or the cladding of the intentional triad of Roman architecture and then
its basic form with revetment. Semper will later adapt as the underpinning of post-Vitruvian architectural
this notion of Kunstform to the idea of Bekleidung, theory. Semper’s radical reformulation stemmed from
that is to say, to the concept of literally ‘dressing’ the his seeing a model of a Caribbean hut in the Great
fabric of a structure. Exhibition of 1851. The empirical reality of this simple
Bötticher was greatly influenced by the philoso- shelter caused Semper to reject Laugier’s primitive
pher Josef von Schelling’s view that architecture hut, adduced in 1753 as the primordial form of shelter
transcends the mere pragmatism of building by virtue with which to substantiate the pedimented paradigm
of assuming symbolic significance. For Schelling of Neoclassical architecture. Semper’s ‘four elements’
and Bötticher alike, the inorganic had no symbolic countermanded this hypothetical assumption and as-
meaning, hence structural form could only acquire serted instead an anthropological construct compris-
symbolic value by virtue of its capacity to engen- ing: 1) a hearth, 2) an earthwork, 3) a framework and
der analogies between tectonic and organic form. a roof, and 4) an enclosing membrane. While Semper’s
However, any kind of direct imitation of natural form elemental model repudiated Neoclassical authority
was to be avoided since both men held the view it none the less gave primacy to the frame over the
that architecture was an imitative art only in so far load-bearing mass. At the same time, Semper’s four-
as it imitated itself. This view tends to corroborate part thesis recognized the primary importance of the
Grassi’s contention that architecture has always earthwork, that is to say, of a telluric mass that serves
been distanced from the figurative arts, even if its in one way or another to anchor the frame or the wall,
form can be seen as paralleling nature. In this ca- or Mauer, into the site.
pacity architecture simultaneously serves both as This marking, shaping and preparing of ground
a metaphor of, and as a foil to, the naturally organic. by means of an earthwork had a number of theo-
In tracing this thought retrospectively, one may cite retical ramifications. On the one hand, it isolated
Semper’s ‘Theory of Formal Beauty’ of 1856 in which the enclosing membrane as a differentiating act,
he no longer grouped architecture with painting and so that the textual could be literally identified with
26

1. Gottfried Semper, drawing of a Caribbean hut exemplifying the „four elements”: structure and roof, podium, hearth, and infill wall, 1851
2. Hendric Petrus Berlage, Stock Exchange, Amsterdam, 1897–1904, cross-section
3. Reconstruction of a typical medieval Town from Karl Gruber’s Die Gestalt der Dutscher Stadt, 1937. The image shows the difference between
the heavyweight monument al architecture and the lightweight residential fabric

3
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the proto-linguistic nature of textile production that etymological connotations residing here of which
Semper regarded as the basis of all civilization. On Semper was fully aware, above all, the connection
the other hand, as Rosemary Bletter has pointed out, between knot and joint, the former being in German
by stressing the earthwork as the fundamental basic die Knoten and the latter die Verbindung, which may
form, Semper gave symbolic import to a non-spatial be literally translated as ‘the binding’. All this evidence
element, namely, the hearth, which was invariably an tends to support Semper’s contention that the ultimate
inseparable part of the earthwork. The term ‘breaking constituent of the art of building is the joint.
ground’ and the metaphorical use of the word ‘foun- The primacy that Semper accorded to the knot
dation’ are both obviously related to the primacy of seems to be supported by Gunter Nitschke’s research
the earthwork and the hearth. into Japanese binding and unbinding rituals as set
In more ways that one Semper grounded his the- forth in his seminal essay ‘Shime’ of 1974 [5]. In Shinto
ory of architecture in a phenomenal element having culture these proto-tectonic binding rituals constitute
strong social and spiritual connotations. For Semper agrarian renewal rites. They point at once to that close
the hearth’s origin was linked to that of the altar, and association between building, dwelling, cultivating and
as such it was the spiritual nexus of architectural form. being that was remarked on by Martin Heidegger in
The hearth bears within itself connotations in this re- his essay ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ of 1954.
gard. It derives from the Latin verb aedificare which Semper’s distinction between tectonic and stere-
in its turn is the origin of the English word edifice, otomic returns us to theoretical arguments recently
meaning literally ‘to make a hearth’. The latent insti- advanced by the Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti,
tutional connotations of both hearth and edifice are who proposes that the marking of ground, rather than
further suggested by the verb to edify, which means the primitive hut, is the primordial tectonic act. In his
to educate, strengthen and instruct. 1983 address to the New York Architectural League,
Influenced by the linguistic and anthropological Gregotti stated:
insights of his age, Semper was concerned with the ...the worst enemy of modern architecture is the
etymology of building. Thus he distinguished the idea of space considered solely in terms of its eco-
massivity of a fortified stone wall, as indicated by the nomic and technical exigencies indifferent to the idea
term Mauer, from the light frame and in-fill – wattle and of the site.
daub, say – of medieval domestic building, for which The built environment that surrounds us is, we
the term Wand is used. This fundamental distinction believe, the physical representation of its history, and
has been nowhere more graphically expressed than the way in which it has accumulated different levels
in Karl Gruber’s reconstruction of a medieval German of meaning to form the specific quality of the site, not
town. Both Mauer and Wand reduce to the word ‘wall’ just for what it appears to be, in perceptual terms, but
in English, but the latter in German is related to the for what it is in structural terms.
word for dress, Gewand, and to the term Winden, which Geography is the description of how the signs of
means to embroider. In accordance with the primacy history have become forms, therefore the architectural
that he gave to textiles, Semper maintained that the project is charged with the task of revealing the es-
earliest basic structural artefact was the knot, which sence of the geo-environmental context through the
predominates in nomadic building form – especially transformation of form. The environment is therefore
in the Bedouin tent and its textile interior. There are not a system in which to dissolve architecture. On
28

the contrary, it is the most important material from Centraal Beheer office complex of 1968–72. In each
which to develop the project. Indeed, through the instance there is a similar concatenation of span and
concept of the site and the principle of settlement, support that amounts to a tectonic syntax in which
the environment becomes the essence of architectural gravitational force passes from purlin to truss, to pad
production. From this vantage point, new principles stone, to corbel, to arch, to pier and abutment. The
and methods can be seen for design. technical transfer of this load passes through a series
Principles and methods that give precedence to of appropriately articulated transitions and joints. In
the siting in a specific area [sic]. This is an act of each of these works the constructional articulation
knowledge of the context that comes out of its ar- engenders the spatial subdivision and vice versa, and
chitectural modification [my emphasis]. The origin of this same principle may be found in other works of this
architecture is not the primitive hut, the cave or the century possessing quite different stylistic aspirations.
mythical Adam ’s House in Paradise’. Before trans- Thus we find a comparable concern for the revealed
forming a support into a column, a roof into a tym- joint in the architecture of both Auguste Perret and
panum, before placing stone on stone, man placed Louis Kahn. In each instance the joint guarantees
a stone on the ground to recognize a site in the midst the probity and presence of the overall form while
of an unknown universe, in order to take account of alluding to distinct different ideological and referen-
it and modify it. As with every act of assessment, this tial antecedents. Thus, where Perret looks back to
one required radical moves and apparent simplicity. the structurally rationalized classicism of the Greco-
From this point of view, there are only two important Gothic ideal, dating back in France to the beginning
attitudes to the context. The tools of the first are mi- of the eighteenth century, Kahn evokes a ‘timeless
mesis, organic imitation and the display of complexity. archaism’, at once technologically advanced but
The tools of the second are the assessment of physi- spiritually antique.
cal relations, formal definition and the interiorization The case can be made that the prime inspiration
of complexity [6]. behind all this work stemmed as much from Eugene
With the tectonic in mind it is possible to posit a re- Viollet-le-Duc as from Semper, although clearly
vised account of the history of modern architecture, Wright’s conception of built form as a petrified fabric
for when the entire trajectory is reinterpreted through writ large, most evident in his textile block houses
the lens of techne certain patterns emerge and oth- of the Twenties, derives directly from the cultural
ers recede. Seen in this light a tectonic impulse may priority that Semper gave to textile production and
be traced across the century, uniting diverse works to the knot as the primordial tectonic unit. It is argu-
irrespective of their different origins. In this process able that Kahn was as much influenced by Wright as
well-known affinities are further reinforced, while by the Franco–American Beaux-Arts line, stemming
others recede and hitherto unremarked connections from Viollet-le-Duc and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
emerge asserting the importance of criteria that lie be- This particular genealogy enables us to recognize
yond superficial stylistic differences. Thus for all their the links tying Kahn’s Richards’ Laboratories of 1961
stylistic idiosyncrasies a very similar level of tectonic back to Wright’s Larkin Building. In each instance
articulation patently links Hendrik Petrus Berlage’s there is a similar ‘tartan’, textile-like preoccupation
Stock Exchange of 1897–1904 to Frank Lloyd Wright’s with dividing the enclosed volume and its various
Larkin Building of 1904 and Herman Hertzberger’s appointments into servant and served spaces.
 29

In addition to this there is a very similar concern for Enlightenment the rhetorical techne of logos was
the expressive rendering of mechanical services as replaced by the scientfic logos of techne. However,
though they were of the same hierarchic importance in Scarpa’s architecture this replacement did not take
as the structural frame. Thus the monumental brick place. Technology is present with both the forms in
ventilation shafts of the Richards’ Laboratories are a chiastic quality. Translating this chiastic presence
anticipated, as it were, in the hollow, ducted, brick into a language proper to architecture is like saying
bastions that establish the four-square monumental that there is no construction without a construing, and
corners of the Larkin Building. However dematerial- no construing without a construction [7].
ized, there is a comparable discrimination between Elsewhere Frascari writes of the irreducible impor-
servant and served spaces in Norman Foster’s tance of the joint not only for the work of Scarpa but
Sainsbury Centre of 1978, combined with a similar for all tectonic endeavours. Thus we read in a further
penchant for the expressive potential of mechanical essay entitled ‘The Tell-the-Tale Detail’:
services. And here again we encounter further proof Architecture is an art because it is interested not
that the tectonic in the twentieth century cannot only in the original need for shelter but also in putting
concern itself only with structural form. together spaces and materials, in the meaningful man-
Wright’s highly tectonic approach and the influ- ner. This occurs through formal and actual joints. The
ence of this on the later phases of the Modern Move- joint, that is the fertile detail, is the place where both
ment have been underestimated, for Wright is surely the construction and the construing of architecture
the primary influence behind such diverse European takes place. Furthermore, it is useful to complete our
figures as Carlo Scarpa, Franco Albini, Leonardo understanding of this essential role of the joint as
Ricci, Gino Valle and Umberto Riva, to cite only the the place of the process of signification to recall that
Italian Wrightian line. A similar Wrightian connection the meaning of the original Indo-European root of the
runs through Scandinavia and Spain, serving to con- word art is joint... [8].
nect such diverse figures as Jørn Utzon, Javier Sáenz If the work of Scarpa assumes paramount impor-
de Oíza and most recently Rafael Moneo, who as it tance for stress on the joint, the seminal value of Ut-
happens was a pupil of both. zon’s contribution to the evolution of modern tectonic
Something has to be said of the crucial role form resides in his reinterpretation of Semper’s ‘four
played by the joint in the work of Scarpa and to note elements’. This is particularly evident in all his ‘pago-
the syntactically tectonic nature of this architecture. da/podium’ pieces, which invariably break down into
This dimension has been brilliantly characterized by the earthwork and the surrogate hearth, embodied in
Marco Frascari in his essay on the mutual reciprocity the podium, and into the roof and the textile-like in-fill,
of ‘constructing’ and ‘construing’: to be found in the form of the ‘pagoda’ – irrespective
Technology is a strange word. It has always been of whether this crowning roof element comprises
difficult to define its semantic realm. Through the a shell vault or a folded slab (as in the Sydney Opera
changes in meaning, at different times and in differ- House of 1973 and the Bagsvaerd Church of 1976).
ent places, of the word ‘technology’ into its original It says something for Moneo’s apprenticeship under
components of techne and logos, it is possible to Utzon that a similar articulation of earth – work and
set up a mirror-like relationship between the techne roof is evident in his Roman archaeological museum
of logos and the logos of techne. At the time of the completed in Merida, Spain in 1986.
30

Shime-nawa, traditional apotropaic Shinto signs in bound rice straw and paper.
 31

As we have already indicated, the tectonic lies of articulation, ranging from the over-articulation of
suspended between a series of opposites, above joints to the under-articulation of form.
all between the ontological and the representational.
However, other dialogical conditions are involved in Postscript: tectonic form and critical culture
the articulation of tectonic form, particularly the con- As Sigfried Giedion was to remark in the intro-
trast between the culture of the heavy-stereotomics, duction to his two-volume study The Eternal Present
and the culture of the light-tectonics. The first implies (1962), among the deeper impulses of modern culture
load-bearing masonry and tends towards the earth in the first half of this century was a ‘transavantgardist’
and opacity. The second implies the dematerialized desire to return to the timelessness of a pre-historic
A-frame and tends towards the sky and translucence. past; to recover in a literal sense some dimension
At one end of this scale we have Semper’s earthwork of an eternal present, lying outside the nightmare
reduced in primordial times, as Gregotti reminds us, to of history and beyond the processal compulsions
the marking of ground. At the other end we have the of instrumental progress. This drive insinuates itself
ethereal, dematerialized aspirations of Joseph Paxton’s again today as a potential ground from which to resist
Crystal Palace, that which Le Corbusier once described the commodification of culture. Within architecture
as the victory of light over gravity. Since few works the tectonic suggests itself as a mythical category
are absolutely the one thing or the other, it can be with which to acquire entry to an anti-processal world
claimed that the poetics of construction arise, in part, wherein the ‘presencing’ of things will once again
out of the inflection and positionings of the tectonic facilitate the appearance and experience of men.
object. Thus the earthwork extends itself upwards to Beyond the aporias of history and progress and
become an arch or a vault, or alternatively withdraws outside the reactionary closures of historicism and
first to become the cross-wall support for a simple light- the neo-avant-garde lies the potential for a marginal
weight span and then to become a podium, elevated counter-history. This is the primeval history of the
from the earth, on which an entire framework takes logos to which Vico addressed himself, in his Nuova
its anchorage. Other contrasts serve to articulate this Scienza, in an attempt to adduce the poetic logic of
dialogical movement further – such as smooth versus the institution [9]. It is a mark of the radical nature
rough at the level of material (see Adrian Stokes’s study of Vico’s thought that he insisted that knowledge is
Smooth and Rough, 1951), or dark versus light at the not just the province of objective fact but also a con-
level of illumination. Finally, something has to be said sequence of the subjective, ‘collective’ elaboration of
about the signification of the ‘break’ or the ‘dis-joint’ archetypal myth, that is to say, an assembly of those
as opposed to the signification of the joint. I am allud- existential symbolic truths residing in the human expe-
ing to that point at which things break against each rience. The critical myth of the tectonic joint points to
other rather than connect: that significant fulcrum at just this timeless, time-bound moment, excised from
which one system, surface or material abruptly ends the continuity of time.
to give way to another. Meaning may be thus encoded
through the interplay between ‘joint’ and ‘break’, and This chapter of Labour, work and architecture:
in this regard rupture may have just as much mean- collected essays on architecture and design was
ing as connection. Such considerations sensitize the first published in Architectural Design, vol. 60, no.
architecture to the semantic risks that attend all forms 3–4/1990, pp. 19–25.
32

Endnotes

[1] H. Sedlmayr, Art In Crisis: The Lost Centre, New York [6] V. Gregotti, „Lecture AT the New York Architectural
and London: Hollis and Carter Spottiswoode, Ballantyne& League”, Section A., no. 1; February/March 1983.
Co. Ltd., 1957, p. 164. [7] M. Frascari, „Technometry and the work of Carlo Scarpa
[2] C. Greenberg, „Modernist Paining” (1965), republished and Mario Røidolfi”, Proceedings of the ACSA National
In Gregory Battock, Ed., The New Art., New York: Dutton, Conference on Techdoom, Washington 1987.
1966, pp. 101–102. [8] M. Frascari, „The Tell-the-Tale Detail”, In VIA, no. 7,
[3] G. Grassi, „Avant-Garde and Continuity”, In Oppositions, Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania and MIT Press,
no. 21, summer 1980, pp. 26–27. 1984, pp. 23–37.
[4] I. S. Morales, „Critical Discipline”, In Oppositions, no.23, [9] See J. Mali, „Mythology and Counter-History: The New
Winter 1981, pp. 148–150. Critical Art. Of Vico and Joyce”, In Vico and Joyce, Donald
[5] G. Nitschke, „Shime: Building/Unbilding”, Architectural P Verene, Ed., Albany: State University of New York Press,
Design, no. 44, 1947, pp. 747–791. 1987.