Toward A New Tectonic

Architecture’s role as the mediator between the environment and occupant has been discarded, handing off the roles of structure and environment to engineering, and leaving itself spatial planning and aesthetics. Simultaneously, standardization has further reduced the expressiveness of architecture. The tectonic traditions of architecture have been cast aside in favour of a pan-global style, and remain marginalized with the current trend toward the overly formalist design of the first digital era. In opposition to the generic, thin architecture that has been produced through the use of climate control - digital simulation of environmental forces, materials, and construction, can allow for the generation of a thick architecture of specificity, tuned and expressive of its place through an expanded sense of the tectonic material basis of form. This associative architecture, formed by physical forces, with a basis of ‘necessity’ will allow for an attempt to reassert a more substantial architecture through digital means.