Rise Tectonic Machines!

Situated within a growing interest in new machine processes by the architectural community, ‘Rise Tectonic Machines!’ documents Prof. Marcus Shaffer’s progress in designing and realizing semi-autonomous, city-making machinery. In formulating this work, Shaffer’s writings touch upon various architectural automations past, present, and proposed; ranging from Homeric deidalia, to Tsutomu Nehei’s Builders; from Edison’s Monolithic Pour formwork, to Japanese efforts in saving the working methods of their master craftsmen through technology. In contextualizing the many drawings, models, and prototypes that record Shaffer’s evolving machine, the book qualifies a need for automated construction technologies—specifically in environments of human displacement. As warfare, natural disasters, and economic upheaval increasingly turn our cities into humanitarian crisis zones, the book raises a call for devising Tectonic Machines—deployable architectural proxies—as means of transmitting buildings and building beyond the limitations of conventional architectural practices.