Writing Architectures
Ficto-Critical Approaches
Published on 29. October 2020
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-1-350-13790-5 (ISBN)
Description
Architects and fiction writers share the same ambition: to imagine new worlds into being. Every architectural proposition is a kind of fiction before it becomes a built fact; likewise, every written fiction relies on the construction of a context in which a story can take place.
This collection of essays explores what happens when fiction, experimental writing and criticism are combined and applied to architectural projects and problems. It begins with ficto-criticism - an experimental and often feminist mode of writing which fuses the forms and genres of essay, critique, and story - and extends it into the domain of architecture, challenging assumptions about our contemporary social and political realities, and placing architecture in contact with such disciplines as cultural studies, literary theory and ethnography. These sixteen newly-written pieces have been selected for this volume to show how ficto-critical writing can be a powerful vehicle for creative architectural practice, providing new opportunities to explore modes of writing about architecture both within and beyond the discipline.
The collection represents a broad range of geographical and cultural positions including indigenous and non-Western contexts, and includes a foreword and afterword by important thinkers in the domains of architectural criticism (Jane Rendell) and cultural studies/ethnography (Stephen Muecke).
This collection of essays explores what happens when fiction, experimental writing and criticism are combined and applied to architectural projects and problems. It begins with ficto-criticism - an experimental and often feminist mode of writing which fuses the forms and genres of essay, critique, and story - and extends it into the domain of architecture, challenging assumptions about our contemporary social and political realities, and placing architecture in contact with such disciplines as cultural studies, literary theory and ethnography. These sixteen newly-written pieces have been selected for this volume to show how ficto-critical writing can be a powerful vehicle for creative architectural practice, providing new opportunities to explore modes of writing about architecture both within and beyond the discipline.
The collection represents a broad range of geographical and cultural positions including indigenous and non-Western contexts, and includes a foreword and afterword by important thinkers in the domains of architectural criticism (Jane Rendell) and cultural studies/ethnography (Stephen Muecke).
Reviews / Votes
A storybook about architectural storytelling, this important collection conveys well the powers of fiction to get us to things that can often seem more significantly real than the 'facts' as they are officially constituted and received. The authors, while retaining a keen sense of the contingency of their own writing, attend closely to questions of witness, the situatedness of experience and the ways in which the imagination can take flight from them, addressing what stories it matters to tell and the immanent critical charge that they carry. * Mark Dorrian, Forbes Chair in Architecture, University of Edinburgh, UK * An extraordinary collection of writings where existential ideas about world orders migrate though different architectural and spatial typologies. Ficto-criticism allows multiplicity, simultaneity and disruption; it allows the reader to travel between different times, places and objects of investigation, enabling multiple connections and complex affinities based on the extrusion of evidence to an event lingering between reality and fiction. * Lydia Kallipoliti, The Cooper Union, USA *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
35 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
714 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-13790-5 (9781350137905)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2020
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
€29.99
Available for download
Persons
Helene Frichot is Professor of Architecture and Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor of Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Naomi Stead is Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture at Monash University, Australia and Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Naomi Stead is Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture at Monash University, Australia and Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Content
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Prelude
1. Prelude - the ways in which we write, Jane Rendell (UCL, UK)
Writing Architectures
2. Waking Ideas From Their Sleep: An introduction to ficto-critical writing in and of architecture, Helene Frichot (KTH, Sweden) and Naomi Stead (Monash University, Australia)
3. From Site to Situation: Cutting up as fictocritical composition, Anna Gibbs (Western Sydney University, Australia)
4. Construction (and connection), Katrina Schlunke (University of Tasmania and Sydney, Australia)
5. Incompossible Constructions of an Island Paradise, Helene Frichot (KTH, Sweden)
6. Archaeologies of Exile on Trikeri Island: Listening to stones and speculating on prison matters, Elke Krasny and Phoebe Giannisi
7. In which Robert Smithson visits Christchurch: Ficto-criticism and the field trip, Jacky Bowring (Lincoln University, New Zealand)
8. Hiroshima: Notes of the expanded field, Kim Roberts (Independent Scholar, Australia)
9. Writing Walking: Ficto-critical routes through eighteenth-century London, Emma Cheatle (University of Sheffield, UK)
10. The Indelible Traces of Your Footsteps, Mireille Roddier (University of Michigan, USA)
11. Sydney Letters: A to E, Naomi Stead (Monash University, Australia) and Katrina Schlunke (University of Tasmania and Sydney, Australia)
12. Outrage on Calle Alcala, Scott Colman (Rice University, USA) and Lars Lerup (Rice Univeristy and University of California at Berkeley, USA)
13. Architecture as Entourage: The politics of objects, Michael Young (The Cooper Union, USA)
14. The Architect Who Couldn't Write, Keith Mitnick (University of Michigan, USA)
15. Return to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after The Marriage Plot, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady (University of Queensland, Australia)
16. The Bannister, Katrina Simon (RMIT University, Australia)
17. Nice House, Woodland Lakes, Andrew Steen (University of Tasmania, Australia)
18. The Door Left Ajar: On Dissident Waiting and Collective Fiction, Sepideh Karami (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Postlude
19. Postlude - Ficto-criticism after critique, Stephen Muecke (Flinders University, Australia)
Index
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Prelude
1. Prelude - the ways in which we write, Jane Rendell (UCL, UK)
Writing Architectures
2. Waking Ideas From Their Sleep: An introduction to ficto-critical writing in and of architecture, Helene Frichot (KTH, Sweden) and Naomi Stead (Monash University, Australia)
3. From Site to Situation: Cutting up as fictocritical composition, Anna Gibbs (Western Sydney University, Australia)
4. Construction (and connection), Katrina Schlunke (University of Tasmania and Sydney, Australia)
5. Incompossible Constructions of an Island Paradise, Helene Frichot (KTH, Sweden)
6. Archaeologies of Exile on Trikeri Island: Listening to stones and speculating on prison matters, Elke Krasny and Phoebe Giannisi
7. In which Robert Smithson visits Christchurch: Ficto-criticism and the field trip, Jacky Bowring (Lincoln University, New Zealand)
8. Hiroshima: Notes of the expanded field, Kim Roberts (Independent Scholar, Australia)
9. Writing Walking: Ficto-critical routes through eighteenth-century London, Emma Cheatle (University of Sheffield, UK)
10. The Indelible Traces of Your Footsteps, Mireille Roddier (University of Michigan, USA)
11. Sydney Letters: A to E, Naomi Stead (Monash University, Australia) and Katrina Schlunke (University of Tasmania and Sydney, Australia)
12. Outrage on Calle Alcala, Scott Colman (Rice University, USA) and Lars Lerup (Rice Univeristy and University of California at Berkeley, USA)
13. Architecture as Entourage: The politics of objects, Michael Young (The Cooper Union, USA)
14. The Architect Who Couldn't Write, Keith Mitnick (University of Michigan, USA)
15. Return to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after The Marriage Plot, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady (University of Queensland, Australia)
16. The Bannister, Katrina Simon (RMIT University, Australia)
17. Nice House, Woodland Lakes, Andrew Steen (University of Tasmania, Australia)
18. The Door Left Ajar: On Dissident Waiting and Collective Fiction, Sepideh Karami (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Postlude
19. Postlude - Ficto-criticism after critique, Stephen Muecke (Flinders University, Australia)
Index