The idea that a building's construction, how its parts join, bear load and resist forces, should be made legible and expressive rather than concealed behind a finished skin, so that the way a building is built is part of what it means. The term traces to the German theorist Gottfried Semper's nineteenth-century writing on the art of building, and was revived as a central critical term by the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton in his 1995 book Studies in Tectonic Culture, aimed against buildings that apply a symbolic image over a structural system it has nothing to do with.
Facts
Concept Domain Formulated YearThe year of Kenneth Frampton's Studies in Tectonic Culture, which revived the term for current architectural discourse; the underlying idea traces to Gottfried Semper's nineteenth-century writing. Connections
Associated With
Both are Kenneth Frampton's own critical vocabulary, developed together against a placeless, purely image-driven modern architecture.
Source Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of ArchitectureBanister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition)
Sources
1. Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture
Banister Fletcher, edited by Dan Cruickshank (20th edition), Architectural Press, 1996
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