Plate Tectonics

To “see” architecture, or feel the space of a room, is to see beyond the surface that bounds it—the material from which that surface is constructed, to its intentionality, meaning and affect. rchitecture is building that means something, and the grammar of its language is the discipline of tectonics.The history of thinking about tectonics has been written with respect to trabeation, arcuation and vaulting, geodesy, and now is being challenged by the digital access to reality-free realms of imagination. But there are a few new technologies in this new world that retain a tectonic necessity. One of them is plate—steel, aluminum, or other metals, plywood, concrete (not shells), or polymer, and that is what this section has studied over the past year and demonstrated in these projects.