Kenneth Frampton apropos tectonic: on the high-wire of a definition

Kenneth Frampton, architectural critic and Columbia University professor, responds to the criticism that has been levelled at his notion of the ‘tectonic’ in this interview with Paulo Martins Barata. Frampton views the tectonic as a way of resisting both the ‘speculator’ economy of mass-produced construction and the ‘atectonic’ architecture of Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism. At the same time, he acknowledges the quixotic nature of an idea that is ‘a kind of rearguard response to the commodification of architecture’. The interview is set in context by Martins Barata.