Wallpaper & Tectonics - a critical discussion of the state of the architectural discipline

Describing the methodological implications of the architectural discipline, the tectonic traditionally denote an honest unification of form, structure and materials, which is increasingly challenged in the hasty development that define the current architectural practice. In opposition, the associations of the notion of cladding are ambiguous: On one hand it signifies the quality of many of the most recognized works within architectural history as an effect of their detailed sensuous adaption to the human scale. On the other hand the notion has particularly in modern architecture become associated with dishonesty, an invective denoting an atectonic covering of poor constructions. As an effect of this critical linkage between the notion of cladding and the tectonic, it forms a specific potential in discussing the current state of the architectural discipline that this paper explores. By analyzing two chosen examples; the guest bedroom of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Derngate 78 and the garden of Arne Jacobsen’s Søholm, the paper states that the often-criticized principle of cladding unfolds a particular potential in awakening the sensuous and narrative dimensions of architecture that signifies our recognition of its quality. Simultaneously, these are dimensions that are increasingly suppressed within the multifarious technological, structural, and economical conditions of the contemporary practice. Through a rereading of the history and architectural significance of wallpaper inspired by Gottfried Semper’s tectonic theories and exemplified in the two case study analyses, the paper argues that the notion of cladding essentially marks a deliberate sensuous and technical involvement
in adapting the structural elements of construction to the scale of the human body. Semper’s theories which emanate in the principle of cladding and the softness of dressing outline a turning point in this matter by relating the question of the tectonic to the responsibility and role of the architect. Hence, by relating it with wallpaper, which is so obviously interlinked with the theatrical and even the feigned, the paper demarcates a direction for a critical future
understanding of the tectonic which (re)positions the detailed level of spatial engagement that wallpaper potentially represents as a focal point of the architectural discipline.