The book is a collection of drawings, models, and prototypes, which represent the author's progress in making a humanitarian building-making machine for use in [re]constructing environments of displacement. As an introduction to the project, the author assembles an architectural program (purpose) for such a device. Short text essays touch upon:
- Conditions in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camps that warrant automated building systems.
- The need for emergency city-making as means of housing displaced urban peoples.
- The lack of architecture/design in environments of displacement.
- The advantages of systems-based approaches to emergency housing as compared to drop-in-place structure solutions.
- A history of architectural instrumentation and tectonic machines which includes common devices such as the manual block press, and uncommon technologies such as Thomas Edison's Monolithic Pour formwork system.

As an introduction to the machine specifically, the author demonstrates that formwork systems have evolved over centuries to become mobile/animated systems capable "climbing" and "flying". The writing makes a correlation between his digi-mechanical, formwork for humanitarian construction efforts, and the evolution of automated building systems in Japan - where building-making machines have evolved into animated tools developed to save and transmit cultural/ritual craft techniques. Ultimately, the goal of the author's Tectonic Machine work is an embodied mechanical synthesis of our sophisticated/precise building technologies, conjoined with our human building practices, which are essentially cultural/ritual in nature.

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