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 essays 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 illuminating readings into the works of Louis Kahn, Robin Evans, John Coltrane, Giulio Romano and Andrea Palladio.