Writing Architectures: Ficto-Critical Approaches

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 the experiment of ficto-criticism – a post-modern 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 16 original 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). Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CHAPTER ONE Prelude: The Ways in Which We Write Notes CHAPTER TWO Waking Ideas from Their Sleep: An Introduction to Ficto-critical Writing in and of Architecture Notes Bibliography CHAPTER THREE From Site to Situation: Cutting Up as Fictocritical Composition Notes Bibliography CHAPTER FOUR Construction (and Connection) The flying tree As one The skin of trees Mothers Notes Bibliography CHAPTER FIVE Incompossible Constructions of an Island Paradise Notes Bibliography CHAPTER SIX Archaeologies of Exile on Trikeri Island: Listening to Stones and Speculating on Prison Matters Listening to stones Speculating on prison matters Epilogue (Post-face) Stones don’t lie Declarations of repentance Notes Bibliography CHAPTER SEVEN In Which Robert Smithson Visits Christchurch: Ficto-criticism and the Field Trip Prologue Field trips and expeditions Photographs and captions Made-up monuments Pyschogeography and situationism Becoming Robert Smithson Christchurch as Passaic Epilogue Notes CHAPTER EIGHT Hiroshima: Notes on the Expanded Field Notes Bibliography CHAPTER NINE Writing Walking: Ficto-critical Routes through Eighteenth-century London Notes References CHAPTER TEN The Indelible Traces of Her Footsteps I. READING II. COPYING III. WRITING Notes CHAPTER ELEVEN Sydney Letters: A to E Afterwards Notes CHAPTER TWELVE Outrage on Calle de Alcalá The escape The initial response The background The protests The confrontation The consequence CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Aesthetic Recycling of Cultural Refuse Entourage, objects, ornament, exchange Architectures of accumulation Notes CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Architect Who Couldn’t Write Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Notes CHAPTER FIFTEEN Return to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after The Marriage Plot The Marriage Rot: A Sequel Notes CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Bannister Notes Bibliography CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Nice House, Woodland Lakes 1 2 3 4 5 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Door Left Ajar: On Dissident Waiting and Collective Fiction The waiting room Slides that travel down beneath the visible world The lamp post: The anchor for a collective fiction 03 + Oscillation = The queue Queue: A collective fiction 02 + The wires and pipes = The queue 01 + The door left ajar = . . . Notes CHAPTER NINETEEN Postlude: Fictocriticism after Critique The conceptual architecture Alliances After critique Notes INDEX