Reading Architecture: Literary Imagination and Architectural Experience
Location: Greece
Symposium Date: 2015-06-16
Call for papers:
Professor Aulis Blomstedt used to advice his students at the Helsinki University of Technology that the capacity to imagine situations of life is a more important talent for an architect than the gift of fantasizing space. From the small scale of the domestic environment to the level of the city, literature has systematically provided us with detailed and compelling explorations of situations of life. As sociologist Robert Park famously declared we are mainly indebted to writers of fiction for our more intimate knowledge of contemporary urban life. A primary means of representation of human reality, dealing since the 19th century even with questions that had traditionally been the province of philosophy, literature focuses on the ever-changing and difficult to grasp conditions of human life, the very life that buildings, places and cities, surround, enclose, and enable.
Departing from this conviction, the symposium wishes to explore how the literary production of modernity can enlighten architects and urban planners in understanding and valorizing qualitative characteristics of the contemporary life they are called to design for. These situations of life could include a focused look into people’s everyday private and public lives, small or big scale events in human-built environments, socio-cultural and political phenomena in urban contexts. We understand these situations as place-bound (place specific) architectural experiences that allow for a qualitative, emotional and embodied apprehension of the world.
The symposium invites papers on the above categories of architectural experiences as captured in literature, to open up a discussion on how they can inform and inspire architects and architecture nowadays. It also invites papers with a pedagogical focus, exploring how the emotional, intersubjective and place-bounded worlds that literature reveals to us, can enrich architectural design and education.
The symposium will take place at Athens' Benaki Museum from June 16th to 18th, 2015.
Submission deadline: January 15, 2015
For more information, plesae visit www.readingarchitecture.org
Call for papers:
Professor Aulis Blomstedt used to advice his students at the Helsinki University of Technology that the capacity to imagine situations of life is a more important talent for an architect than the gift of fantasizing space. From the small scale of the domestic environment to the level of the city, literature has systematically provided us with detailed and compelling explorations of situations of life. As sociologist Robert Park famously declared we are mainly indebted to writers of fiction for our more intimate knowledge of contemporary urban life. A primary means of representation of human reality, dealing since the 19th century even with questions that had traditionally been the province of philosophy, literature focuses on the ever-changing and difficult to grasp conditions of human life, the very life that buildings, places and cities, surround, enclose, and enable.
Departing from this conviction, the symposium wishes to explore how the literary production of modernity can enlighten architects and urban planners in understanding and valorizing qualitative characteristics of the contemporary life they are called to design for. These situations of life could include a focused look into people’s everyday private and public lives, small or big scale events in human-built environments, socio-cultural and political phenomena in urban contexts. We understand these situations as place-bound (place specific) architectural experiences that allow for a qualitative, emotional and embodied apprehension of the world.
The symposium invites papers on the above categories of architectural experiences as captured in literature, to open up a discussion on how they can inform and inspire architects and architecture nowadays. It also invites papers with a pedagogical focus, exploring how the emotional, intersubjective and place-bounded worlds that literature reveals to us, can enrich architectural design and education.
The symposium will take place at Athens' Benaki Museum from June 16th to 18th, 2015.
Submission deadline: January 15, 2015For more information, plesae visit www.readingarchitecture.org