IV. Tectonics of the Built and Natural Environments Nature, in this sense, is not seen as an indifferent, inscrutable force or a divine cycle of creation, but rather as a collection of material things whose reasons and relations architecture has the task of revealing.1 Vittorio Gregotti “Territory and Architecture”
In order to address the design challenges inherent with the
Sutro Baths site, it is important to understand the conceptual point of interaction between environment and architecture. Vittorio Gregotti, a practicing architect and major figure in the field of tectonics, writes, “It is modification which transforms place into architecture and establishes the original symbolic act of making contact with the earth, with the physical environment, with the idea of nature as a totality.”2 Gregotti asserts that is the initial marking of the ground which begins the primordial, creative act. That act bestows new meaning or marks a previously concealed meaning, thus signifying a space as a place.
Based on Gregotti’s logic, architecture considered as a form
of modification, as a marker, embodies the fundamental connection between the act of making and the site. Frampton also alludes to this in his writings on the poetics of construction, wherein he evokes the Greek root of the word poesis meaning the act of making or revealing.3 Therefore the process of constructing architecture is more than a simple assembly of parts – it is a method of enhancing the meaning which underlies the importance of place. Frampton touches on this in his discussion of objects: In this regard it is possible to identify three distinct conditions: 1) the technical object, which arises directly out of meeting an instrumental need; 2) the scenographic object, which may be 1 Vittorio Gregotti. “Territory and Architecture.” in Kate Nesbitt, ed., Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 341. fig. 4.1 Projecting concrete beam, Sutro Baths; 2013.
2 In this instance Gregotti uses the term “place” as synonymous with location. Gregotti, Vittorio. “Territory and Architecture.” (In Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, edited by Kate Nesbitt. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.) 342. 3 Frampton, Labor, Work, and Architecture, 92
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