The ‘Tectonic Sensibility’ in Architecture: From the Pre-Human to the Post-Human

Abstract

This paper argues for a new definition and a broader application of tectonic theory in architecture. It extends the traditional understanding of tectonics as a bodily feeling for the physical materiality of constructional elements, in order to form the basis of a more generalized notion of a bodily sensibility towards the ‘the way things are’. The discussion is informed by an evolutionary perspective on the relationship between technology and human embodiment, suggesting links between the ‘pre-human’ and the ‘post-human’. It offers a reassessment of an often overlooked but pivotal insight evident in the work of both André Leroi-Gourhan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that the human and the technological are mutually co-constitutive. It explores this notion in the light of recent research in archaeology, evolutionary, psychology, philosophy and neuroscience.