‘Books are not made to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry’: space, language and theories of knowledge in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

If architecture creates stories, can stories create architecture? So the essay of Mariana Garcia Fajardo - a student in my Architectural Phenomena module in the SSAC MSc at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL - begins addressing Umberto Eco’s design of the library in his acclaimed novel The Name of the Rose. For Mariana, the... Continue Reading →

Aug 16, 2020

Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital: a genealogy of individual and collective intelligence in his architecture

I will be speaking at the Architectural Space and Society Centre at Birkbeck 9 November 6pm Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital: a genealogy of individual and collective intelligence in his architecture Sophia Psarra, Bartlett School of Architecture Leveraging new materials and means of production, architects, planners and corporate powers... Continue Reading →

Oct 23, 2018

The cognitive art of rendering displays of complex data – design strategies in the Piazza San Marco

Visibility Graph Analysis of the Piazza San Marco in the context of neighbouring islands using Depthmap software1 Blog Entry I ‘...and the whole place in its huge elegance, the grace of its conception and the beauty of its detail, was more than ever like a great drawing room, the drawing-room of Europe profane... Continue Reading →

Jul 23, 2018

Mapping Real and Representational Space – Part I

‘However abstract, however contemplative in spirit, however remote from practical application, it [geometry] must surely have arisen from, and easily translates back into, the tasks of shaping artifacts, laying out buildings, and surveying land’. Robin Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries. In a visually oriented culture we tend to equate... Continue Reading →

Jul 8, 2018

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 →

May 22, 2018

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 →

May 19, 2018

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 →

May 17, 2018

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 →

May 17, 2018

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Category: Spatial Imagination