Karl Friedrich Schinkel: The tectonic unconscious and new science of subjectivity

The Neo-modernist discourse on tectonics and return to material metaphors in architecture--to an ontology of building structure and arbitrary ornamental language--find their origin in 19th-century German theory and, more specifically, in the writings of Karl F. Schinkel, Karl Botticher and Gottfried Semper. Inspired by Classical archeology, Schinkel found that the compelling interest in the mechanical forms of ancient Greek temples and Gothic vaults reflected an attribute of man's innate subjectivity, an inevitable feature of human consciousness and ground for practical reason and freedom. Further inspired by German Idealism, he considered the structure of modern architecture a metaphor of this subjectivity--a self-representation of man's unconscious desire manifested in real building materials, structurally determined spaces, and repetitive mechanical elements. This theory of Tektonik, derived from the Greek word for artisan (Tektonen), also defined an identifiable aesthetic Anschauung and requisite form of visual knowledge that preserved cultural ideals and guided social development. Similarly, tectonic ornament provided mythical allegories of the timeless nature of the human psyche and its need for visual confirmation in architecture. Thereby, ornament assumed a rhetorical role and functioned as a critique by using language in a poetic manner to insinuate man's unconscious, primal unity with material nature.It is my position that Schinkel's theory of self-representation became the basis of 19th-century theories of Tektonik and was conveyed by 20th-century Modernists such as Peter Behrens, Eric Mendelsohn, and Mies van der Rohe into our contemporary architectural thought. Tectonics and its formal Expressionist antithesis remain metaphors inseparable from the history of subjectivity and modern architecture. By examining the literary excerpts and fragments in Schinkel's Philosophical Notebooks, we may distill the principal themes of his tectonics, their relationship to Idealist metaphysics and their reliance upon early German studies in clinical psychology and ethnography. Materials found in the Prussian archives also illustrate how Schinkel was forced to compromise his tectonic ideals to the political expediency of public administration and to the "reality" of local self-determination. Schinkel eventually created a didactic textbook (Lehrbuch) and reformed the architectural curriculum of the Bauakademie in Berlin to reflect his tectonic principles. Rather than extol his architectural works, this paper critically examines his tectonics and its historical contradictions in architectural practice.