Surface: A-Tectonic of Roofing and Wrapping

This paper makes the claim that a different understanding of architecture prevails when criticism aims at exploring the threshold between theory and architectural autonomy. To navigate in the realm of theory, and to lend form merely to the vicissitudes of cultural theories, dismisses both history andarchitecture's position in the capitalist cycle of production and consumption. This paperer attempts to historicize contemporary architecture in reference to Gottfried Semper s theory of dressing. The intention is to demonstrate that proliferation of the tectonic rapport between the two elements of roof and clothing is informed by the conflation of architecture's interiority with digital techniques. Semper is important today because his idea of theatricality provides a useful tool for analysing the expressionistic tendencies of computer-generated forms, and the latter's relation to the aesthetics of commodity fetishism. Once a semi-autonomous understanding of architecture is established, an argument can be made to plot two recent projects by Peter Eisenman and Renzo Piano in the context of what might be called topological tectonics. The binary underpinning of this comparison is prohlematized when Greg Lynn's views on the tectonics of blob are included in the fuzzy picture of current architectural theories.