Delighted to see #thevenicevariations in the bookshop of the @la_Biennale Thank you to the team of @UCLpress @BartlettArchUCL @bartlettSDAC
In Good Company
Part 2 – From Figure to Con-figuration: Generative Architecture Through the Prism of Literature
PART TWO Following from my previous blog, I explore here how architecture informs literature and how ideas can be transferred from literature to architecture. In my book Architecture and Narrative13 I looked at the short fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer who used architectural models in his work. One of the most intriguing... Continue Reading →
Part 1 – From Figure to Con-figuration: Generative Architecture Through the Prism of Literature
PART ONE This is the first part of a talk I recently gave in Figurations, a History and Theory conference at the Bartlett School of Architecture, organised by Jane Rendell, Sophie Read and Robin Wilson (25 April 2018). It is fortuitous that that the conference took place at the same time with the opening of... Continue Reading →
The Venice Variations: Introduction Preview
Between authored architecture and the non-authored city "To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice." -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Three artefacts In 1972 the Italian writer Italo Calvino published his most acclaimed work of fiction, a novel about cities that made a seminal... Continue Reading →
UCL European Institute Video
In this video I introduce my new book on Venice, and how, as humans we are wired to look for ideal patterns, for stories, for ideal places and ideal patterns in literature, art, architecture, design... tracing them through three ‘artefacts’: a city—Venice, a book—Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and a piece of architecture—Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital. The book... Continue Reading →
The Venice Variations: Preview Part 4
The future we must strive to achieve So why Venice matters today? Venice allows us to address very significant questions concerning our urban future. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery? By which mechanisms they foster imagination and innovation? How do they adapt and sustain... Continue Reading →
The Venice Variations: Preview Part 3
The three artefacts as networks The analysis of Venice, Calvino’s novel and Le Corbusier’s Hospital is conducted to understand at a deeper level whether there are characteristics in the city that are creatively transposed from the city to the other two works. It also looks at what creative devices have been employed in crafting the... Continue Reading →
The Venice Variations: Preview Part 2
Venice in the Western imagination – the Myth of Venice What role does Venice play in the Western imagination? As Tony Tunner explained, Dickens entered Venice in a dream; Ruskin came to it replete with English notions of the Romantic to produce not art history but fiction; Canaletto distorted Venice to his own ideal perspectival... Continue Reading →
The Venice Variations: Preview Part 1
1. Why Venice matters today There is a pair of linked questions at the heart of this book: Why has Venice inspired, and continues to inspire, the imagination of so many artists, architects and ordinary people? Does Venice still matter today? More specifically, what matters most the individual creative output of buildings, architecture and works... Continue Reading →
Con-figurations 