Architecture Words 9: Tectonic Acts of Desire and Doubt

This collection of a number of key essays by the New York-based architect and writer Mark Rakatansky proposes an innovative framework for architecture to enact the complex tectonic dramas of social and culture space. Following its title, the book is arrayed in three sections: Tectonic, Acts of, Desire and Doubt. In each, Rakatansky covers a series of subjects in a writerly voice that varies from the third-person narrative of the scholarly essay to the transcript of an email exchange with fellow academic Sarah Whiting discussing recent books by architect Greg Lynn. Transformational performances of architectural identity are explored in discussions of fabrication, social parametrics, building envelopes, spatial narratives, animation, migrancy, and in readings into the works of Louis Kahn, Robin Evans, John Coltrane, Giulio Romano and Andrea Palladio.


Architecture Words is a series of texts and important essays on architecture written by architects, critics and scholars. Like many aspects of everyday life, contemporary architectural culture is dominated by an endless production and consumption of images, graphics and information. Rather than mirror this larger force, this series of small books seeks to deflect it by means of direct language, concise editing and beautiful, legible graphic design. Each volume in the series offers the reader texts that distil important larger issues and problems, and communicate architectural ideas; not only the ideas contained within each volume, but also the enduring power of written ideas more generally to challenge and change the way all architects think.