Review

Reviewed Work(s): Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in

Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture by Kenneth Frampton
Review by: Sergio L. Sanabria
Source: Technology and Culture , Oct., 1997, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), pp. 992-995
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of
Technology

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3106977

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992 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

shortcoming within the country, a lost opportunity

form in the United States" (p. 4). Yet Luccarelli n
clear what the forces behind this failure or this mo
were; he suggests, but does not fully develop, the co
coeconomic reasons why the ideas of Mumford and
never embraced. Beyond the notion that the laiss
of elites opposed RPAA ideas-and that the RPAA
galvanize popular support-he does little to cri
mentability of these ideas.
This is especially important in view of Luccarelli's
ent-day neotraditionalists such as Peter Calthorpe, w
sign ideas find much in common with the regionalis
concepts espoused by Mumford and the RPAA. N
sign concepts are at the core of a number of new
in the 1990s. At the same time, they are the focus o
versy among planners and academics who question w
ditional design concepts can be implemented and wh
be successful politically or economically. This con
informed by lessons drawn from a more critical anal
of Mumford's ecological regionalism in an earlier
Despite this one shortcoming, Lewis Mumford is an
that should be required reading for students of plan
urban history. It presents a comprehensive overview
tant ideas in planning history, while at the same tim
intellectual and organizational contexts in which t
MARTHAJ. BIANCO
DR. BIANCO is assistant director of the Center for Urban Studies at Portland State
University. Her teaching and research interests include urban transportation policy
and urban history.

Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and

Twentieth Century Architecture. By Kenneth Frampton. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. Pp. xv+430; illustrations, figures, notes,
bibliography, index. $50.00 (hardcover).

Technical innovations play an important role in architecture, al-

though their presence is not always visibly manifested. Central air-
conditioning, for example, is normally concealed; its expression in
Frank Lloyd Wright's 1903 Larkin Building in Buffalo or more re-
cent, stylishly mechanical buildings is exceptional. Again, Chicago
School architects developed steel frames in the 1880s, but exposing
them was illegal because Chicago code after the 1871 fire required
refractory materials to clad metallic structures. Their architectural
expression entailed constructing independent decorative revet-
ments mimicking the concealed frame. For modern architects re-

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TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 993

vealing technology was a very different affair th

it, and a subject of heated debate. Yet, most "pos
tural theorists have abandoned the problem of le
tion and structure, considering it an exhaust
Frampton, a well-known historian of modern ar
cusses selected modern attempts to express ne
tems. This focus on the constructively derived v
onto currently fashionable historical and the
centered on philosophers such as Vico, Merlea
Habermas, and Gadamer.
Frampton's three general introductory chapters acknowledge but
deemphasize the historical prominence of the Structural Rational-
ists, Labrouste, Pugin, Robert Willis, Viollet-le-Duc, and Auguste
Choisy. Frampton identifies their positions as ontological, meaning
that they insisted on the revelation of actual structure or construc-
tion in buildings. He stresses instead a contrasting constructive urge,
born in neo-Grecque and neo-Gothic styles in 18th-century France
and voiced by the 19th-century German tectonic theorists, Karl
Mfiller, Karl B6tticher, and Gottfried Semper. Tectonics entails the
expression of the act of building, not necessarily its reality.
Like Alberti or Laugier before him, Semper based an investigation
of the essential elements of architecture on its earliest utterance, the
primitive hut. He understood better than his predecessors the types,
construction, and symbolism of real aboriginal houses, having access
to anthropological and ethnographical evidence accumulated under
European colonialism. He postulated four universal elements at the
roots of all architecture: the stereotomic earthwork, the hearth, the
tectonic frame and roof, and the nonstructural, often woven, infill
membrane. Semper differentiated these categories ambiguously,
and Frampton's reliance on them often becomes a crutch, unwar-
ranted on historical or technical grounds. Stereotomic refers to earth-
bound stonework: tectonic, to the jointed frame construction of car-
penters. But the representation of older tectonic elements in the
stonework of Greek Doric temples made the wdrk tectonic in Sem-
per's view. In turn Semper called vaulted mass construction in con-
crete stereotomic, disregarding its historical implication of precise
geometric cuts.
Semper's ideas circulated widely, and their influence freed many
architects from rationalist strictures against superfluous construc-
tion. Frampton follows this often-noted but unsystematically studied
aspect of modernism in his next seven chapters, which deal with
20th-century architects whom he sees as reifying Semper's tectonic
teachings. The architects selected have few historical or ideological
affinities. These chapters are compiled from earlier articles by
Frampton, suggesting a hasty gathering of pieces of an enterprise
long in the making. The book encapsulates much recent scholar-
ship, evident in a text assembled from long quotations, not always

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994 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

in mutual agreement. It offers few novelties beyond

nective interpretation of an alternate Semper
grounded on architectonic, constructive, and engine
individual buildings. Thus, Wright's work is said to
weaving of the membrane. Perret's embodies in rein
a brilliant but ideologically compromised classical
embodies classical tectonics in steel and glass, emb
industrial zeitgeist. Louis Kahn merges the stereotom
tectonic realm, extolling in laconic writings an ideal
authentic Heideggerian tectonic objects bathed in
is inspired by the 18th-century utopian geometri
Ledoux but supported by the genius of his rationalis
gust Kommendant. J0rn Utzon raises great tectonic
shells like ship hulls over earthwork platforms. Aga
Ove Arup, plays deus ex machina in the wings. Carlo
joining, the master carpenter's art, to the ultim
form.
The book is about poetics: Frampton is not a histor
ogy. His historical technical descriptions are frequ
and he can earnestly ascribe importance to the ir
because he is a modern specialist, his command of
dieval vocabulary is weak and often descends to
These problems undermine especially the analysis
work and occasionally raise serious questions about t
prise. The ultimate concepts underlying this boo
categories of founding, joining, cladding, and center
generic to build an alternate history. If all buildin
sisted, shares in these elements, their presence in m
is also inevitable. Drawing attention to them clarifie
of ancient traditions in modernity but does not dif
tinct Semperian strand. Semper's German texts,
Le-Duc's, were not translated until relatively recent
influence in the French- and English-speaking w
careful demonstration before Frampton's elaborat
come fully convincing.
This book is at once inspiring and annoying. Its br
sive and demonstrates that the history of modern a
be expanded to include a major theoretical strain nei
cal to technology nor dependent on it. Nonetheless t
remains unfocused, scattered, missing too many con
finitive guide to a putative modern tectonics still aw
SERGIO L. SANABRIA

DR. SANABRuA, associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Miami Uni-

versity, is completing a book on the 16th-century Spanish architect Rodrigo Gil de
Hontafi6n. Author of numerous articles on Gothic and Renaissance architecture,

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TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 995

he is also engaged in a long-term research project on the R

dral of Metz.

Paradise Valley, Nevada: The People and Buildings of an American Place.

By Howard Wight Marshall. Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
1995. Pp. xiv+ 152; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00
(cloth).

Recent years have brought closer analysis of the vernacular forms

that make up the American community and the culture that they
represent. Contemporary scholarship has also sought to cut through
the layers of myth and symbol that imbue our view of the American
West in order to clarify and discern the regional character that has
taken shape during the European settlement of the West. Howard
Wight Marshall's close analysis of this Nevada ranching community is
one of the first successful efforts to bring these two crucial scholarly
developments together.
While not a pioneering work in its scope or implications, Paradise
Valley nonetheless offers an effective analysis of a community that is
at once exceptional and regionally generic. Careful material analyses
of the towns of the American West are still exceedingly rare. Scholars
have generally found little to differentiate one western community
from another or have instead sought to analyze material practices
or artifacts as regional patterns. This tendency has furthered the idea
that the West is more process than place. Marshall gives us firsthand
observations to prove the contrary.
This lovely, oversized book is a product of the Paradise Valley
Community Folklife Project, which was established by the American
Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Marshall's field notes and
analysis make up the core of the text, and a plethora of stunningly
detailed photos assist the reader at each point. By the book's end,
the reader deeply understands this place that began as a small,
seemingly insignificant site in north-central Nevada. Most impor-
tant, Marshall ties the patterns and forms used in building this
remote enclave to European practices (specifically to Italian stone-
cutting).
Marshall's overall mission is to prove that the West did not just
unfold, but was in fact a "designed frontier." The purposeful ar-
rangement of Paradise is particularly accessible because of the re-
gion's aridity, which allows for "longevity of artifacts." Building ma-
terials provide an excellent example of this careful development in
locales where lumber was unavailable. In such instances, Marshall
finds that periods of trial and error functioned community-wide as
various alternatives were tested. Such needs could also lead to ethnic
influx, such as the immigration of skilled stone workers from Italy.

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