记忆与再生 建构在当代建筑设计文化中的实现 - Memory and Regeneration. The Actuality of Tectonics in Contemporary Architectural Design Culture

Contemporary design culture identifies the term tectonics as the art of assembly. The critical analysis of an architectural project or, on a methodological level, its setting on the basis of construction issues, is an ancient practice with no geographical boundaries, which finds its theoretical roots in the 19th century Gottfried Semper’s thinking. His ideas and pragmatic operational approach have served as basis for the definition of an architectural theory which has garnered great critical acclaim over the last two centuries, representing the starting point from where Kenneth Frampton derives the critical and narrative path of his Studies in Tectonic Culture –studied also in China thanks to the 2007 translation by Wang Junyang. The work of Rijnboutt Architects presented here is consistent with this design research line: the identification of the existing building’s construction features has allowed the functional and architectural regeneration of the new building complex. In this way, the existing load-bearing structures have been exalted and promoted to true spatial devices capable of generating the architectural quality of some significant rooms in the new library. This sensibility to construction issues has led to a renovation project in which the spatial and ornamental quality is obtained by the interaction between structural components and surface finishing materials, new or existing. The tectonic process of assembly generates also the ornamental component of the new façade, which thus declines through the surface cladding the Semperian category of tiling.