2025
Tectonics and the Grammar of Program
Abstracts
Faber Tignarium:
Gravity Unleashed
Keywords: tectonics, baukunst, contractor, Gotfried Semper, Leon Battista Alberti, Marin County civic center, Mortensrud church, Oslo
The word tectonics is ubiquitous in the studio where it is deployed mostly with little theoretical resonance to point to the designer’s commitment to careful detailing. It is usually evoked as a coded reference to the ethos of the carpenter. In this paper I am not going to engage these theoretical implications or historical resonances, but rather dig more deeply into the related concept, faber tignarium, a phrase introduced by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise on architecture. Faber tignarium means ‘maker of beams,’ but got translated in the Joseph Rykwert edition as ‘carpenter.’ Alberti makes it clear that faber tignarium is not an architect, but little more than a glorified laborer. But to reclaim the space of the faber tignarium is also to reclaim its traditional locus, namely ‘the roof.’ There is, after all, a big diRerence between ‘maker of beams’ and a maker of furniture. In order to bring the issue of the roof out of hiding, I will discuss some well know structures like the Mies van der Rohe’s National Gallery (1968) and Benedetta Tagliabue’s Santa Caterina Market of Barcelona (2005) to less well-known projects like Cinthia Marcelle’s installation at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (2019) and Diane Simpson’s fusion of roof structure and clothing design. Instead of seeing the roof as something that provides shelter or as something that simply spans a space that is dictated by walls, I want to celebrate the creative and conceptual space of the faber tignarium as a point of resistance to the hegemony of program, plan and wall. I will orient the conversation in particular to the something that could be thought of as an anti-gravity poetics, where the solution does not reside in utopian bubbles but rather in the craft of making gravity seem to disappear. The paper thus reimagines the tension not just between architect and engineer, but also between the visible and the invisible, given that the ‘optics’ of roofs are inevitably from below, and thus inevitably opposite from the optics of the architect which tends to be from above.
Steps Towards Negative Tectonics
Keywords: Tectonics, Frampton, Negative Dialectics, Adorno
Reflecting on tectonics is impossible without thinking about its ideation by Kenneth Frampton, which, despite the quasi-mysticism of Frascari’s ‘Tell-the-Tale Detail’, or Peter Rice’s structural expressionism (especially as manifested in Piano’s best work), is how most architecture students, practitioners, and educators come to and deploy ideas of a poetics of construction. If Frampton’s conception of tectonics ostensibly resists architecture’s dissolution by capitalist production, programming mostly speaks the language of that dissolution. Like function (or functionalism), modernity typically limits program by over systematization (even without informatics, algorithms, or parametric design). Likewise, despites its claims, Tschumi’s ‘disprogramming’ falls within the systematizing orbit of programming, similarly Koolhaas’ performative indeterminateness. At best, tectonics and programming suggest a negative dialectical tension, impossible to resolve but worth pursuing. At worst, tectonics and programming are two sides of architecture’s systematizing habits paralleling the long erasure of its disciplinary status as a liberal profession.
As argued in the proposed paper, instead of liberating architecture, Frampton’s attempt to precisely define the parameters of tectonic resistance, as prerequisite for architecture’s redemption, disables the concept, and the architecture that follows, ensnaring both within the ambit of totalizing system, ensuring results more programmatic than de-systematizing. Mary McLeod offers a clue to the genetic defect of Frampton’s coinage of tectonics, as commonly deployed in architecture: “Frampton seems to be searching for a logic (and, in his case, an aesthetic vision) that would embrace the paradoxes of two seemingly disparate worldviews [phenomenology and Marxism] in his search for reservoirs of resistance against the onslaught of ‘commodity culture’ and the ‘imperatives of production.’”[1]
Accepting McLeod’s reading, Frampton’s search “for a logic”, to construct “an aesthetic vision” resistant to architecture’s capture by the culture and building industries depends on his embrace of the “seemingly disparate worldviews” of “phenomenology and Marxism.”[2] However, generally, but especially as performed by architects (practitioners, teachers, students), the two are joined by totalizing visions. While Marxist tendencies toward absoluteness are familiar enough, phenomenology mostly evades such badging, perhaps because architectural phenomenology largely presumes the continuity of an unfallen golden age across every rupturing catastrophe, which sets it Right of center, in contrast to Marxism’s Left of center positioning. However, as Foucault concludes, “the phenomenological method certainly wants to account for everything, whether it be to do with the cogito or with what precedes reflection, with what ‘is already there’ when the cogito is activated; in this sense, it is clearly a totalising method.”[3] Arguably, Frampton’s continuous desire to construct the logic of an aesthetic vision requires him to attempt to “account for everything” in totalizing fashion, akin to Marx, Marxism, and Marxists. In his effort to resist capitalist maximalization Frampton defaults to programming solutions too ensnared within the very constellations of thought and action he wishes to resist and overcome.
Foucault provides a route away from tectonics and program in his assertion “that from the moment one cannot describe everything, it is through the concealing the cogito, in a way putting aside that first illusion of the cogito, that we can see emerging entire systems of relation that otherwise would not be describable”; including for example the associability of phenomenology and Marxism as simultaneously conservative and totalizing in their nostalgic programmatic aspirations.[4]
If one aim of the proposed paper is to argue that rather than liberating architecture, Frampton’s tectonics formulation ensnares it within totalizing system – inevitably disabling the concept and the architecture following from it, another is to recuperate tectonics by rescuing it from programmatic Marxism and phenomenology alike. The first steps towards a negative tectonics include admitting catastrophe and fragmentation rather than denying either, informed by Adorno’s negative dialectics as a tactic for continuously thinking thought against itself (in theory and practice), to avoid the resolving tendencies of Frampton’s tectonic ambition. Beginning with the complexities of Adorno’s proposition that writing “poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”, the comforts of phenomenology and program in their tectonic and technocratic guises can be abandoned to begin working in the fallen world as it is, guided by desires for alternative relationships, anticipatorily illuminating elusive revolution.[5]
A negative tectonic foregoes illusions of continuity without renouncing use (bodies or gravity), while disavowing autonomy myths. The persisting political context of architecture’s production implicates it in making and maintaining brutal inequalities, including despoiling the planet, confirming the persisting significance of Adorno’s thinking for working in and through catastrophe by foregoing repetition in favor of reconstruction, while surrendering all prospects of resolution, if not desires for it.
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1
Mary McLeod, “Frampton in Frame”, Architecture Today, 16 Nov. 2020. Available online at: https://architecturetoday.co.uk/frampton-in-frame/
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2
Ibid.
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3
Michel Foucault, “Who are you, Professor Foucault?” (1967), Lucille Cairns (trans.), in Religion and Culture, New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 93.
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4
Ibid.
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5
Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society” (1949), Samuel and Shierry Weber (trans.) in Prisms, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967, p. 34.
The Thinning Space of Architecture
AI Image Generation and the Reversal of Design Logic
Keywords: Tectonics Digital Design Process, Architecture Syntax, Architecture History/theory
Architectural production in the 21st century is facing a profound reversal of the role of tectonics in architecture. The architectural perspective and rendering used to be produced at the end of the design process to give clients a "view" of the project. With the arrival of generative AI models, these images are moving to the forefront, guiding the design process from the beginning. Starting with an image, the syntactic connection between structure and expression has to be constructed, developing the substance of the form of spaces and facades represented in the initial representations. A design concept’s abstraction and the building’s principles have to be deduced from a realistic or semi-realistic graphic.
This essay explores the changing relationship between the image and the notion of tectonics in architecture, highlighting the flattening of space and the resulting loss of spatial depth. The analysis concerns changes in the architectural design process and the impact the sequencing and representation of ideas through images have on the outcome. In parallel, it traces the increasing presence of pictures in the 20th- and 21st-century history of architecture, embedding more and more literal imagery into architecture.
The 19th-century discourse around tectonics in architecture operated on the assumption that form and expression emerged as a result of materiality and technology in conjunction with its related narrative. The architectural discourse of 19th-century Europe was characterized by the polychromy debate led (among others) by German-born French architect Jacob Ignatius Hittorff. The discovery of paint particles on Greek temples and the subsequently created reconstruction drawings revealed a layered architecture, buildings that shared stories while also articulating their structural conditions. Architecture was already intimately connected to sculpted images situated on facades illustrating spiritual topics or historic events. At that same time, the separation of skin and skeleton was theoretically underpinned by Gottfried Semper’s work, which linked architecture to its textile origins. In Semper’s understanding, the knot connecting two pieces of yarn is ultimately the starting point of weaving. It represents the generative element of the architectural joint, transferring forces and visualizing them. In his writings, craftsmanship is the driver of architectural form even in the event of a material change. This overlapping potential of architecture referencing its history (actions or fabrication) and culture set the basis for numerous expanded interpretations of tectonics developing in the face of globalization and climate change. The initial meaning of the term tectonics (frequently linked to the Greek word "Tektonikós") anchored it to the act of building and joining. Eduard Sekler wrote the following definition of "tectonics" in 1965: "For these qualities which are expressive of a relation of form to force, the tectonic should be reserved [...]. Thus structure, the intangible concept, is realized through construction and given expression through tectonics." (Sekler 1965: 89) [1]
Over the following decades, this expression increasingly shifted to images carrying the message of not only construction but also of program or product. In the 20th century, an understanding of available products and structural requirements drove the design process for many architects in the Western world—working within an industrialized construction framework. Postmodern tendencies turned to the power of the image rather than the mechanics and expression of assembly as aesthetic drivers.
Counteracting modernism and its lack of ornament and narrative, postmodern architecture turned to various themes, also elevating the image to the scale of architecture. A rising consumerist culture left its imprint on architecture and the continuing search for appropriate forms. The 21st century is experiencing a reversal of how architectural syntax is developed. Digital images and their prompts processed by AI models stand at the beginning of the conception of buildings. The articulation of the building’s structure, overall materiality, and fabrication follows a representation of the building’s appearance, reversing the process of design and challenging the definition of tectonics. This essay traces the gradual thinning of architectural structures and skins over the last centuries. It illustrates a changing relationship between architecture and imagery evolving synchronously to the digitization of the design process, all of it leading to an overall thinning of architectural space.
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1
Sekler. E. 1965. “Structure, Construction, Tectonics.” In Structure in Art and Science, edited by G. Kepes.
Gravitivity
Architecture’s Defiance in a Post-Structural Society
Keywords: Gravitivity, Post-structuralism, Temporal Layers, Social Structures, Solid Structures, Architecture’s Defiance
The paper deals with the relationship between architecture and contemporary socio-political structures, drawing from the concepts of desiring machines and bodies without organs as developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The central premise derives from the fact that today, architecture as a socially embedded practice operates in increasingly unstable and unpredictable conditions of global capitalism, where traditional hierarchies and institutional frameworks have been disintegrating. In such a context, architecture decreasingly relies on stable systems and increasingly operates in conditions of continuous flow, adaptation, and openness.
We introduce the concept of temporal layers, an analytical tool developed from the division of the architectural system into material and functional components with different lifespans. This six-layered structure based on the models proposed by Stewart Brand, Francis Duffy and Dietmar Eberle helps us understand both buildings as systems and their adaptability. This model is challenged in the case of Ljubljana’s Cukrarna Gallery, where the classical hierarchy of layers is inverted: the programme dictates the structure, and the historical shell turns into an empty supporting surface. Architecture thus enters into a relationship of tension between the past and the present.
The paper works to expand the temporal layers to the broader urban context, where it addresses the phenomena of homelessness and consumerism as expressions of how bodies without organs function in a contemporary city. Rather than discuss them in terms of order versus chaos, the authors see them cohabiting as two spatial logics that transform urban space. Their shared characteristic is the dismantling of classical temporal and structural hierarchies: the central solid layers become improvised or displaced, while dynamic external and internal layers become the only vessels of content and meaning.
To allow architecture to maintain its identity, we introduce the concept of gravitivity – a spatial and temporal re-grounding that derives from structural frameworks as a vehicle of stability and continuity. Gravitivity is a physical as well as symbolic quality that allows architecture to move beyond its current uses and resist being dissolved into the flows of unpredictable changes in content and appearance, We illustrate this with two examples: the Concrete Tent project by DAAR collective, which transforms a tent – a symbol of temporariness – into a permanent concrete structure with a collective memory, and DARS office building with its exposed structural framework that defines the spatial logic of the building and its resistance to economic and organisational changes. The paper concludes by defining gravitivity as a means of one’s identification with a space as an act of re-grounding and resilience against the dominance of temporal layers, as well as against dissolution, incorporeity, and dispersion of an existential space into bodies without organs.
The Anonymous Detail
The Imaginative Effacement of John Hejduk’s Measured Drawings
This paper proposes to examine the architectural detailing and logics of fabrication of the late work of the American architect John Hejduk (1929-2000) as these particularly relate to his Masque Projects. It proposes that Hejduk’s radical reconceptualization of the architectural program and his encompassing effort to give form to that program through drawing (entailing more than building descriptions, but also stories, poems, characters and visions) are reliant on an approachable, anonymous logic of assembly and detail employed to construct the imaginative world that Hejduk created.
The details and other ‘technical’ drawings are, therefore, to be seen as inseparable from the more provocative aspects that Hejduk’s late oeuvre creates and provides an essential grounding for the projects in a reality that is ultimately transcended. The paper begins with a description of Hejduk’s construction drawings as they provide this grounding. It will examine Hejduk’s late work in general but focus on those projects that Hejduk brought forward for more elaboration in several series of precise measured that forward Hejduk’s initial sketches to more complete and finished sets of drawing such as those for his Berlin Masque or his Lancaster/Hanover Masque.
The paper will subsequently compare Hejduk’s methods of representation with the surrealist painter Rene Magritte. Magritte, like Hejduk, eschewed an overt display of painterly skill in favor of a more anonymous - and for this paper’s intentions – more open engagement of the viewers imagination thereby inviting the viewer into a world filled with the paradoxical and uncertain. The paper will postulate that this anonymity is essential to both the artist’s and Hejduk’s work and their similar engagement of the viewer as a co-creator in their work and apprehension (or in Hejduk’s case, the construction) of their created worlds.
Finally, two of Hejduk’s projects will be closely interrogated in the light of this comparison: The House of the Suicide and House of the Mother of the Suicide (constructed in Atlanta, Prague, and New York by the author) and the Museum for Some of the Works of Giacometti. The projects, the former constructed of wood and steel and the latter to be constructed in steel, masonry, and concrete, will be examined in terms of their detailing and constructive assembly. An emphasis will be placed on the rather self-effacing ordinariness of these project’s detailing: a representation in contrast to the imagery that characterized Hejduk’s work at this time. As indicated above, this contrast is essential to their importance, meaning, and our understanding. The historical circumstances surrounding The House of the Suicide and House of the Mother of the Suicide lends even more merit to this argument.
The paper concludes by positioning Hejduk’s Masque Projects within a notion of the tectonic as a clear symbolic organization of construction, material and space that Hejduk’s work both adheres to and significantly avoids – His is an architecture that is ultimately not about clarity of construction as it aligns with meaning, but as a masked allegory of construction that destabilizes convention vis a vis the tectonic and creates an opening into his invented world of imagination.
To Err is Human
Keywords: Tectonics, Materiality, Design Control, Scale, Shells
Upon entering on a bright summer day, it takes a couple of seconds to get used to the dim lighting of the Rotonda di San Tome and absorb the straightforward tectonic order of this marvel of Romanesque architecture north of Bergamo, Italy. The central domical space is defined by a two-level pyramidal stacking of an ambulatory, a gallery on top, and the central void, supported by the external walls and eight columns arranged concentrically on each level. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that this neat overall tectonic order grows out of total disorder: Each column is different, some capitals are made of bases of columns from earlier building phases, the stereotomy of the arches is distinct in each bay, the layers of the stone masonry walls are uneven.
Even though we like to speak about "tectonic order," there is not one tectonic order for any construct. As in our example, whether we are discussing columns and arches or the stereotomy thereof matters. Its tectonics is zoomable once a structure is built, from building components to material scale. Today, tectonics feels infinitely zoomable before construction, that is, during the design phase. The designer is entitled and somewhat expected to control tectonics down to the material. But this is a relatively new expectation, which has been amplified in the digital era. When San Tome was erected, multiple builders had a formative role in its tectonics, and "design" only controlled the crudest rules.
In this text, I am investigating through three historical case studies how the chosen level of control (or level of zooming in) in the design phase relates to the materiality and how it influences the perception of space and the constructability of the building over time. Below, I will refer to the scale of tectonics, which means a certain number of layers of complexity (from the building component down to the material unit). "Scale" is used interchangeably with "level": i.e., scale of material means on the level of the material unit in the tectonic layers. All examples discussed below are (loosely interpreted) domical spaces, which makes the highest level of tectonics extremely simple. A robust relationship exists between each program and the space (only a few functions require a domical space). Still, the program is less consequential for tectonics, and vice versa (as shown below, there are many ways to construct a domical space).
The Rotonda di San Tome is considered here, first and foremost, as a case study of the necessity for room for error on the material scale when using reclaimed materials. It also showcases how feasibility affects the scale of tectonics considered in the design phase. In the early 12th century, when the Rotonda was built, its designers not only reverted to defining the crudest rules because of the uncertain geometric and material properties of the available stone but also because recording or passing down anything more was not feasible.
For the Rotonda, the room of error was in the range of inches. In 1922, when designing the steel gridshell for the dome of the Schott glass factory in Jena, Germany, Walther Bauersfeld operated with a room of error of 1/6 mm down to the material (steel bar) unit. Bauersfeld, widely recognized as the designer of the world's first geodesic dome, gives an account in his notebook of an incident during the construction (an alarm caused by the misplacement of a single element) of the dome which proves that this extreme precision (and the associated high-level of control during the design phase) was justified in the then-emerging field of thin shells.
Bauersfeld, an engineer of optical devices, had an innate sense for extreme precision. He was fortunately biased to aim for such a high level of control and wondrously talented to overcome the limitations of his tools (i.e., pen and paper) deemed rudimentary at its best by today's standards. The last example, which focuses on the highest level of tectonics, the shape of the shell, describes a lesser-known thin concrete shell project built in 1967 in Hungary. It showcases how bias can also lead to a desire for control not innate to the tectonics, the material, or the construction process. The project was the extension of the KOFEM Factory, which marks a very early use of computers in the history of Hungarian construction. While the shells, to the naked eye, look the same as those built in the first phase five years prior, the addition relies on a more complex geometry and structural model, which necessitated the use of computers for calculations. The lead engineer, Lajos Kollar, was a brilliant academic and designer: it is hard to dismiss the speculation that the challenge itself was a big part of the motivation to divert from the original design, maybe more so than pragmatic considerations.
The three examples suggest a trend from less control during the design phase to more – and consequently, more precision but less autonomy for the builders. Indeed, such a trend exists. The engineering revolution in the eighteenth century changed our expectations of design: We require more certainty, which is generally good as it leads to safer construction. It does not mean, however, that we are not obliged to question the desired level of control case by case. In the digital era we can achieve more than ever: more detail, more complexity. However, it is vital to check whether the complexity generated at one tectonic scale is in reasonable balance with the whole – conceptually and pragmatically.
This text, at large, is about this complex relationship between tectonics and scale in architecture. To be more precise, it is a polemic about the right scale of tectonics, which seems to be highly relevant today. When feasibility-related or technological limitations rarely exist, how do we decide on the right amount of control in the design phase? If to err is human, is total control divine? The selected examples are fraud in many senses: they represent a unique architectural form and are all conveniently dated. Yet, I believe they illustrate the complexity of the problem well. They tell valuable stories of how less control can lead to more detail, yet certain tectonics depend on immaculate precision, i.e., total control. They shed light on how intertwined the problem of tectonics and the construction process is and how personal biases influence tectonics – both its conception and perception.
Drifting Plates
Tectonic Tools
Keywords: catastrophe, agency of architecture, modernology, ethnography, conviviality, tectonic plates
The constant grinding of tectonic plates heralds both transformation and catastrophe.
The awareness of inevitable destruction, often portrayed through the metaphor of ruin, is inbuilt in our building culture yet rarely acknowledged. Architecture negotiates the dialectic between construction and destruction, it is existential to this process yet elusive. It is manifest on the building site which is both a tectonic site of contestation, adversarial in nature, and a forum for collaboration, where finely balanced tolerances are quantified and determined. Architecture sits uneasily between our focus on the building as a discrete object and a search for a cultural consensus of how we might design and build in a broader societal context. Tectonics in relation to building practice and the pragmatics of construction challenges the role of the architect calling for a critical resistance to the forces of industrialisation and their ultimate destruction.
In the context of our contemporary drive to the digital it is instructive to draw distinctions between the production of architecture through the primacy of image that the all-encompassing lens of the computer screen empowers and the ethnographic means by which vernacular architectures have traditionally been realised, through what I call tectonic tools. The tool is an implement, an everyday object, but when it is fashioned, adapted and used it becomes individual and bespoke. Metaphorically it becomes a symbol of empowerment which embodies the totalising economic and political forces within building but also enables individual creativity and resistance. In this context it is noteworthy how depictions of tools and craft processes in Diderot’s 18th century enlightenment project, the Encylopedie, gave identity to and galvanized a new social power base ‘ultimately contributing to the destruction of old values and the creation of new ones’.
This paper will explore how ‘tectonic tools’ that have developed as cultural artefacts imbued with the imprint of their individual makers came to be adopted in architectural discourse often as the means to resist the increasing impact of industrialised production, becoming symbols for an alternative future. I will consider this against the background of increasing digitalisation and the immense cultural experiment which John May has called ‘imaging’.
This resistance can be seen in the writings of Ivan Illich who, in 1973, argued for tools for conviviality that would stand for the opposite of industrial productivity and foster ‘autonomous and creative intercourse among persons and the intercourse of persons with their environment’. The Italian radicals’ educational project ‘Global Tools’, inspired in part by the Whole Earth Catalogue. Access to Tools, sought to build an anti-disciplinarian space to consider arts and crafts in an anti-urban context. Superstudio’s ‘Project Zeno’ and ‘Extra-Urban Material Culture’ focussed specifically on the agrarian and vernacular and the potential for tools and hand crafted objects in forming an alternative modus operandi. Other proponents for the liberating possibilities of tools for self building can be found in Enzo Mari’s ‘Proposta per un’Autoprogettazione’ (‘Self-design proposal’), and Mario Cresci’s Misurazioni, fotografia e territorio. George Kubler’s Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things of 1963 had, to some extent, set the context for these speculations by laying out a perspective where processes of innovation, replication and mutation are in continuous conversation over time. Alfred Wegener, who developed the continental drift theory in the early 20th century, had offered a global framing for these debates as his articulation of the underlying dynamics of tectonic plates offered an explanation for the disjunct biogeologic distribution of present-day life found on different continents but having similar ancestors.
Contrary to this, and marking a profound break with the ethnographic tradition, Vilem Flusser’s reading of the photograph as a technical image generated by the functional apparatus of the camera accounted for a loss of human agency that tools embody. By exposing the programmed nature of the photograph Flusser revealed a tension between the photographer’s creative goals and the camera’s programming that characterises the dilemma of the tectonic tool. He describes the shift in code structures from historical thinking which he argues is linear and rooted in alphabetic writing to the condition of post-history where nonlinear, pixelated technical images predominate. In a world dominated by the apparatus a critical resistance offers ‘the last form of meaningful revolution: reclaiming significance and freedom through conscious engagement with technology’.
What Lies Beneath the Surface
Because of the open porches, how the building is made is completely clear before you go into it. It is the same realization behind Renaissance buildings, which gave the arcade to the street, though the buildings themselves did not need the arcade for their own purposes. So the porch sits there, made as the interior is made, without any obligation of paintings on its walls, a realization of what is architecture. When you look at the building and porch, it is as an offering. You know it wasn’t programmed; it is something that emerged.
You know what’s so wonderful about those porches? They’re so unnecessary.
– Louis Kahn, Light is the Theme, p28
Comprising the west elevation of the Kimbell Art Museum (KAM) located in the museum district of Ft. Worth, Texas and designed by the late Estonian born American architect Louis Kahn are a series of three porches running north to south. Each porch is constructed of reinforced concrete with 2’x 2’ columns located in each corner that supports a 23’ wide x 100’ clear span vaulted cycloid shell roof. These porches stand as a form of architectural introduction to the museum straddling a liminal space that is both interior and exterior. As porches (exterior rooms), they provide a backdrop to the lawn and are part of a carefully choregraphed sequence of architectural events that move the guest from the lawn to the museum. They sit in quiet repose animated by the movement of the sun, the sounds of the water, and echo of footsteps. They also reveal the constructive nature of the museum’s gallery spaces (interior rooms). While elemental in their structural form, the structure foretells the story of the rooms to be formed within the museum.
For Kahn, the questions surrounding the relationship of tectonics to program was foundational and inseparable to his work. He approached architecture with the idea of the room with its proper proportion and purpose as the beginning of architecture and structure the giver of light. The role of architecture was to amplify and elevate the human condition. The KAM, arguable one of Kahn’s finest buildings, in many ways best exemplifies his approach to the consequential relationship of architecture’s constructive nature to inhabitation. Fundamental to this relationship at the KAM is the significant role the porches play in both the design and inhabitation of the museum.
This essay will use the porches of the KAM to provide a lens through which to study the importance of Kahn’s complex and evolving relationship of tectonics to program and maturing architectural position.
An Argument for Maintaining Obsolete Architecture
A Case Study Into the Relational Character of Tectonics and Program When Transforming an Existing Building
Keywords: Tectonics, Transformation, Reuse, Relevance, Longevity
Problem statement
What are the tectonic rules and principles that either hinder or underpin transformation of a building’s program? Based on fundamental tectonic analysis this article critically discusses why/how a rather young office building - representative of a global commercial typology - now faces potential demolition. The building was once conceived as a prestigious ‘architecturally designed headquarter’, symbolizing a multinational corporation’s future vision and market position, whereas today it is considered as an outdated building type that no longer serves its purpose or aligns with today’s functional and aesthetic preferences.
The objective of the article
Adaptive reuse and transformation of existing buildings are critical architectural strategies for reducing the building industry's environmental (GhG) impact by decreasing the demand for new construction (IPCC, 2023). Thus, reprogramming existing structures for reuse and to enable maintaining their relevance is arguably a less resource-intensive intervention than demolition for building new construction. (Eberhardt et al. 2022). However, existing structures hold inherent tectonic features based on their original programming that may challenge repurposing (Cramer & Breitling, 2007). This tension between tectonics and program forms the core of our case study examining Nauticon, a 1990s Copenhagen office building representing a typology often subjected to demolition. Nauticon was built between 1989-90, in the Southern part of the harbor of Copenhagen, Denmark. The building complex features four 5-story Y-shaped volumes connected by three transparent entrance halls. The eastern facades are dominated by blue-coated reflective glass, while the north/west facades feature load-bearing concrete elements. Modern office buildings with industrialized construction systems typically lack recognition as valuable architectural heritage, raising questions about preserving unloved/ unappreciated buildings of our recent past (Realdania, 2024). By identifying the friction points between Nauticon's original/ present programming and tectonics, this article aims to discuss less destructive and more meaningful building practices.
Analysis/discussion
This article analyses friction points between program and tectonics across three intersected levels, which also inform the discussion of how legislative framework impact Nauticon's architectural potential.
1. The context vs. the building body
This section points to the architectural visions and the state of industrialized construction in Denmark that have influenced Nauticon’s development. This includes the site and body of the building; how are the material choices defining the composition of the building (heavy, flexible, durable, kit-of-parts, etc.), and its historical characteristics? It also explores the legal requirements governing the building's reuse and its immediate context, noting how demands for recreational areas and supporting facilities have changed dramatically over the past three decades.
2. The building body vs. the floor plan
Nauticon's Y-shaped volumes were conceived as "universal building blocks" adaptable to any orientation and location. The Y-shaped floor plans with load-bearing facades - designed for maximum interior flexibility and office functionality - now represent the primary obstacles for reprogramming the building. This section studies the building principle; how does the structural layout define the building’s program and vice versa, its usability, spatial qualities, flexibility and future adaptability? Additionally, contemporary legislation regarding access, escape routes, and daylight requirements for spatial depths limits Nauticon's reprogramming potentials.
3. Floor plan vs. specific construction solutions
This section analyses specific design elements as window positioning in the load-bearing concrete facade. These windows were optimized for seated office workers rather than up-standing positions. Similarly, structural elements and joints were dimensioned and optimized for the functionality of the building, making substantial alterations both technically challenging and financially expensive. These design choices create both constructional and legal barriers to physical interventions and raises questions regarding design details and rhetoric; how are the details generated, and which approaches are applied to enhance specific features? What are the functional or aesthetic role models?
Conclusion
Analysis of Nauticon’s tectonic language, current program, and potential future use, reveals significant design, construction, and legal barriers in the process of transforming the building for new use. The study concludes that aligning programs with existing building tectonics minimizes necessary extensive alterations. This reduced intervention scope—particularly for structural systems—is essential for minimizing environmental impact, waste generation, and virgin material consumption. Deeper understanding of a building's history, design intent, and construction principles enables more appropriate functional adaptations. Creating new relevance in existing structures is critical for preserving building resources in place—without it, buildings lose meaning, deteriorate, and face demolition.
Perspectives
How do we find the potential-value / relevance-value / becoming-value of a building?
Would more open interpretation of the legal framework be beneficial to preserve buildings and their relevance? Can market forces be challenged? Is it sustainable that financial incentives determine what a building's new program should be? Perhaps it’s more appropriate to assess what is possible to create/achieve with the existing building at hand. Are modern buildings over-programmed and too purposely designed? How can we design for adaptability or for disassembly to prepare buildings for future changes and different needs?
References
IPCC, 2023: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 184 pp.
Cramer, J. & S. Breitling 2007. Architecture in Existing Fabric - Planning, Design, Building. Basel Switzerland. Birkhauser.
Eberhardt, L.C. M., Garnow A., Birgisdottir H., Rose, J. & Kragh, J. 2022. Klimapotentialet ved renovering kontra nedrivning med nybyg. (1 udg.) Institut for Byggeri, By og Miljø (BUILD), Aalborg Universitet. BUILD Rapport Bind 2022 Nr. 37.
Realdania 2024. Klimavisioner for modernismens bygningskultur. Realdania. Copenhagen.
Realdania 2024. Renovering er bedst for klimaet - Konklusioner fra udviklingsprojektet Klimadata for renovering. Realdania. Copenhagen.
Edvard Ravnikar
The search for Architectural Authenticity
Keywords: Edvard Ravnikar, Authenticity, Tectonics, Architectural Structure
Following the end of World War II, Slovenia saw the emergence of special, regionally adapted modernist architecture. The most credit for this development goes to Edvard Ravnikar, who advocated for the culturally specific character of architecture, even though at the time regional particularities of the built environment were beginning to lose their significance the world over. Ravnikar found the authenticity of Slovenian architecture in the sensitive dialogue between modernism and tradition.
His understanding of tradition draws both from the discipline of classical architecture and the elementary nature of vernacular architecture – the former as the lasting foundation and authority in the structural logic and method of construction, and the latter as an expression of utmost rationality and sincerity dictated by limited resources. Both of them, he found, are guided by the rules of tectonics. His architecture is therefore an indivisible whole of usability, structural design, and appearance. The emphasis is on the supporting structure, which defines spatial organisation, the module, the rhythm, the scale, and the outward expression of architecture. Ravnikar’s designs are not inspired by an a priori image or an abstract artistic composition, but derive from selected construction techniques and methods, materials and their treatment, and the logic of combining and bringing elements together. This is what underpins the extraordinary complexity and unique poetics of his work.
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Nature of Concrete
Keywords: Frank Lloyd Wright, concrete, materials, tectonics
Critical events in architectural history are most often scripted in stylistic or purely formal terms. Yet architects practicing in America in the latter decades of the 19th century engaged another definition of the discipline of architecture, one that was much less concerned with fashion and form, and much more concerned with the tradition of building and the making of places. Throughout his life as an architect, Frank Lloyd Wright attempted to relate the spaces and forms of his designs to the structures and materials with which they were made—as he said, he worked “in the nature of materials.” Wright believed this was essential if his buildings were to engage with the concept of aedificare, the ancient word for building, which means both to edify, to instruct, and to build, to construct—and both understood to be undertaken with ethical intention. Wright engaged in a constant search for a comprehensive order that would encompass both composition and construction, an order similar to the fusion of structure, material, form and function that he had found in his studies of nature. Wright attempted to develop forms from the rhythm inherent in each particular system of construction he employed, so that the construction might in turn be integrated with and responsive to the spatial idea. Of all building materials, Wright considered reinforced concrete to be the one truly modern material—“modern” for Wright because concrete was entirely “plastic,” able to be formed into any conceivable shape, fully fireproof and self-supporting. Reinforced concrete was also the construction material with which Wright had both his greatest difficulties and his greatest successes. An examination of Wright’s efforts to appropriately employ reinforced concrete also illustrates the tradition of building as Wright redefined it in the 20th century.