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an element’s > form character, allowing the way in which the
parts of architectural structure carry loads, embody weight,
or rest are made vividly manifest. The underlying base of ref-
erence for tectonics is the earth itself, upon which the building
either rests stably, or from which it is deliberately detached.
The way in which it touches the ground (> base), then, must
be distinguished from its upper terminus. Between earth and
sky, architectural > structure is realized in the most diverse
ways. Virtually always, however, it is made up of various
components. This is either the modelled or carved and layered
mass upon which, according to Gottfried Semper, tectonics in
the narrower sense is based, i.e. the framework of bar-shaped
parts designed to stiffen the actual spatial shell. Or, as in con-
temporary building technology, the assembly of a multiplic-
ity of components, in many instances no longer individually
identifiable. The tectonics of the building should visualize the
functions that are fulfilled by the individual elements of the
structure; it should display the way in which the building is
articulated through its parts (> detail).
For our daily interaction with architecture, in particular
when it is a question of the concrete operation of its parts- doors, windows, staircases, handrails – familiarity with ob-
jects is decisive. For the architecture to be comprehensible,
the essential question is whether the parts of the building
are manifested as a nontransparent ‘apparatus’, or instead as
the comprehensible ‘objects’ (Posener 1981) of everyday
activity, whether their functions are accessible to the senses,
or their forms conceal function behind homogenizing design.
Our familiarity with architecture is facilitated when we are
offered expression of permanence and substances that is at-
tained through a tectonic conception of architecture, rather
than an ephemeral appearance.
In antiquity, τέκτων (Greek: tekton) was initially the
name for a carpenter; later, it became a general expression for
a building master, one already bound up with poetic and aes-
thetic claims. Surfacing very early was the question of the dif-