Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
fig. iii | illustration of the building system identifying columnar framework with quoined openings for
less skilled labourers to infil; evidence of identity making through different rock/brick face relative to
sourcing, cutting and subsequent laying.
The role of the detail in architectural production
has been profoundly explicated by Marco
Frascari. In his seminal essay, The Tell-the-
Tale Detail, Frascari [1984] locates tectonic
sensibility as the basis for both constructing
and construing meaning in architecture. “The
art of detailing is really the joining of materials,
elements, components, and building parts in a
functional and aesthetic manner. ” In the realm
of spatial production this argument maybe
extended to both spatial and experiential
tectonic. In other words we might consider all
human actions as having a tectonic implication;
whether it be the connection of humans with
their god[s] through mediation of light, or the
combining of materials through techniques of
joining, or the empowerment of impoverished
communities through modes of material
production that are inclusive of their capacity
to construct. Under conditions of austerity and
in developing contexts, such as those of Africa,
the imperative for architectural imagination to
speculate beyond the conventions of the formal
becomes a necessity. Attending to the tectonic
of architectural detail has liberated the iterative
from its mundane representation. Design skill
deployed imaginatively expands that freedom
to render a unique valency to standardisation.
In the case of TSRP in Lesotho this has enabled
the production of space to engage society in
multiple ways; in economic development of
poor communities, in the incorporation of local
materials, traditional skills and space making
and in the potential for harnessing passive
energy, to identify a few.
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