New publication on tectonics by Karl Christiansen

What is tectonics? What is the origin of the concept? What does it mean? These are questions Professor Karl Christiansen examines in his new book.

22.02.2019

In 2015, Professor Karl Christiansen published the book TECTONICS – THE MEANING OF FORM, which dealt with the relationship between form and content. He has now published the follow-up Tektonik – Den tektoniske fordring (Tectonics – the tectonic demand). It will be released in Danish by publisher Valville on 28 March.

In using the subtitle ‘The tectonic demand’ – a clear reference to Løgstrup’s ‘ethical demand’ – Karl Christiansen from the very beginning indicates his errand: Tectonics – in the author’s opinion the basic principle of architecture – is not just the logic of architecture, but also the ethics of architecture. In a time when pretentious projects fail or succeed on various waterfronts due to more or less intransparent political, financial – and now also ecological – interests, it more than ever seems that we need to clarify what defines good architecture, before all these external considerations. ‘Form follows function’, modernism hopefully declared. Today, this formula seems to have been distorted into a caricature in which lack of clarity about function leads to confusion in terms of design. Fortunately, architecture was not born yesterday: It has a millennium-long tradition to fall back on in such ‘times of crisis’ as our time would seem to be.

Karl Christiansen brings this millennium-long experience into play generously. Both in terms of content and form. His account of the theory of tectonics includes examples ranging from the Greek temples to Utzon and Zaha Hadid. Yet what is perhaps more important is the books particular architectural perspective on the history of science and philosophy through these millennia: from Euclid to Mandelbrot, from Aristotle to Heidegger.

The book naturally addresses readers who are committed to the theory and practice of architecture. However, since it moves across language, philosophy, mathematics, the visual arts, psychology, and ethics, it will interest a much wider audience. The book is a synthetical follow-up to the analytical tectonics – the meaning of form (196 p., Systime 2015), which was published in English and illustrated Christiansen’s concept of tectonics in 50 highly diverse examples from the physical world.

The tectonic demand, to paraphrase Kant, provides a concept for intuition. The book is, notwithstanding, written in a rhapsodic, essayistic style. And each section can be read independently – preferably together with the book’s intriguing illustrations. Tectonics is – as the author demonstrates – not just the ethics of architecture, but also the poetics of architecture.