User:Oleegholm/sandbox

Tectonics (from the Ancient Greek tecton, meaning "carpenter")

REF: The ethymological analysis by Kenneth Frampton

Tectonics is used to express form in Architecture as a result of material, technologic, and structural circumstances within the act of making. In 1851, the German theorist Gottfried Semper used the word to describe certain elements that are essential to architecture, and which have their own intrinsic logic in terms of how materials and construction techniques are used. On the basis if an analysis of traditions in ancient Hellenic and Mediterranean cultures, Semper identifies four elements of which architecture consist: The earthwork, the hearth, the wall, and the enclosing membrane. The assessment of tectonics as a term lies in the way Semper describe material properties, construction techniques, and cultural circumstances as the origin of the form of each element. Semper examined ancient Hellenic culture, and traced its physical manifestation up to modern times. An anthropological study of the origin of walls leads to the definition of the phenomenon the enclosing membrane. Derived from ancient ways of living, the closing membrane is originally screens made of weaved carpets or wickerwork, detached from the frame or framework. The frame, Semper argues, is the matter of other materials and techniques, namely wood and woodworking. The Semperian definition of Tectonics is a description of architecture in terms of identifiable elements, different to description offered by Vitruvius in the 'Vitruvian Triad': utilitas, firmitas, venustas. Instead of describing architecture with adjectives thus stating the values of it, Semper introduce an attention to the properties of an architecture consisting of physical elements which carry both a cultural meaning, a functional justification, as well as material and technical logics. In this definition, a continuous evolvement of technological, resource, and material practices constitute their presence. Rather than as the result of a style or a formal agenda. In 20th century Architecture theory, Tectonics is used to describe a discourse in architecture in which material and constructive considerations are used as a generator of form. The English architect and historian Kenneth Frampton argues that the term ‘space’ has had a predominant role in architectural discourses in the 19th and 20th century, at the expense of tectonic thinking. In the book “Studies in Tectonic Cultures” (1984) the notion of space is put into perspective by reconsidering the role of structure and construction. Not in favor of space, but as important factors in the creation of space

REF: ‘It is my contention that the unavoidable earthbound nature of building is as tectonic and tactile in character as it is scenography and visual, although none of these attributes deny its spatiality’ /REF

Kenneth Frampton gives an ethymological analysis of the word tectonics, then a historical account of the use of tectonics by architectural theorists, starting with Semper. He then advances to provide examples where tectonics plays an important role. Frampton gives a number of examples illustrative to the tectonics as an important part of the creation of space: Works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Auguste Perret, Mies Van der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Dimitris Pikionis, Alvar Aalto, Jørn Utzon, and Carlo Scarpa. The works presented serve as counterexamples to ideas of space considered as representation of economic, stylistic or purely technical matters, detached from considerations of materiality, the process of building, the genius loci, the spirit of the place. A similar line of thought proposed by the German Philosopher Martin Heidegger, although he does not used the word tectonics. REF: The need for human institutions to be integrated with the topography in such a way as to offset the rapacity of development as an end in itself. /REF

In an elaboration of the process of building, the paper “The Tell the Tale Detail” by Marcon Frascari highlight the detail as a union of construction with construing (or interpretation) of architecture. The detail is understood on different levels and thus not only as a physical object isolated from its context. Based on a theoretical assessment of details and an empirical study of the works of Carlo Scarpa, “detail” is established as a significant part of architecture as an art. The study conclude that the act of detailing, or the establishment of an order of detail, in turn affect the order of the building. This is due to the fact that details play a central role in avoiding building failure, handle the joining of different materials, components, and building parts, in a manner that is both functional and aesthetical. Frascari states:

[...In the details are the possiblilties of invention, and it is through these that architects can give harmony to the more uncommon and difficult or disorderly environment generated by culture.]

This view upon details differ from a historical understanding of details as a part of a particular mode of representing inadequate details in the build environment to be replaced with appropriate ones. Also, the attitude towards detail is different to a purely industrial aesthetics, where details are separated from the building design into virtual abstractions on drawings, and not a part of the building; Essentially means for describing or controlling the building process rather than specifying a significant feature of the building. Rather, Frascari argues, details as used in the Arts and Crafts movement should be revived. Here the detailing concern practising of workmanship, which is as a duality: It involves the architecture, the plot, and the detail, the tale, and the joint refers to both the formal and actual joint. The detail becomes an important part of understanding the build environment, since haptic and visual sensory inputs directed at details are read against our mind´s conventions of what is space, order, structure, hence they give meaning to the perceived.