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OASE #70
OASE 70: Architecture and Literature
Over its more than 20 years in print, OASE has evolved into a reflective, critical journal, an excellent venue for the theme of this, its seventieth issue, Architecture and Literature. A favorable economic and political climate encourages single-minded designing and building, as the 'SuperDutch' phenomenon has in OASE 's native Netherlands, but OASE 's editors suggest that a boom is exactly the time to look for new perspectives and approaches in literary reflection, to seek encounters between artistic disciplines, to see what reciprocal exchange might offer to architectural practice. OASE 70 discusses the (auto-)biographical novel, in which highly personal descriptions and narratives challenge us to look at architecture in a different way, and at what literary reflection can represent for architectural practice.
144 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2006
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December 2, 2020
In this series of essays and articles, the writers investigate the relationship between architecture and literature.
One investigation is how writers use architecture in literature as a "powerful shorthand introduction" to the themes and plot. For example, The Leopard's ramshackle palace foretells the book's central theme, which is the crumbling edifice of feudal domination. Or, in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse' the structure becomes a metaphor, that keeps circling, its all-seeing ever-open eye shedding continues light onto the world around it, just as literature itself does.
The articles show where the overlaps occur, and the differences. It is easy to imagine a Venn diagram where cultural production, abstract idealism and evocative reminiscences overlap, and also where architecture's physicality, sedentary and concrete nature separates it from literature's reflective, mobility and imaginative capacities.
The writer Gerrewey believes that the two 'hold hands' in modernism, both placing the individual and his utopian ideologies at the heart of everything that follows. However, elsewhere in the same article, he says, "Literature and architecture experience the world in the same way, but arrive at different decisions, and look in different directions." The two ideas placed side by side, create for me the impression of dance partners, as one steps forward, the other, holding hands, steps back to make room, then pivot, spin, step forward, step backward. Such a dance metaphor allows each to be its own, and yet both, are essentially in lock-step with the tune of the day, sashaying with historical moves, and the occasionally invented original one. Gerrewey sees the relationship himself but refers to it as two sides of the same coin, an amulet to wear to confront the future. I like this idea, but it lacks the time-space motion that he inferred. In the same article, it is noted that literature starts revolutions then runs from the fray, because it can analyse and eulogise, but it can not materially intervene. Architecture, on the other hand, does. It builds – whether it is via replacement, improvement, expansions or alterations; architecture builds, materially and inevitably, "because it cannot afford to linger over loss." [When Notre Dame Cathedral's spire burnt and fell, architects rushed to fill the void – for better or for worse – it's what we do.]
In another article, the writer Wim Cuyvers points out that writing is a one-way street, where the audience does not get the right of reply, whilst architecture, on the other hand, by its nature requires an interaction. Moreover, he says that literature requires a laying bare approach, whilst architecture is about sheltering and hunkering down. The two, he says, cannot be done simultaneously. As such, all the 'timid attempts' of architecture to attempt to tackle the 'important' questions that literature deals with daily, led to an architecture which was 'incomprehensible in its abstraction.' Once it had lost its meaning, it was essentially rendered mute. However, in the public spaces around the world, he sees similar, recurring, patterns of habitation and shelter. He believes that these litter-strewn and forgotten spaces can communicate, can be understood without words. In this way, architecture can 'jump over and above' literature.
Klaske Havik points out in her article, that time plays a crucial role in distinguishing the two fields. She suggests that architecture is focused on creating something today, which is also designed as 'something for eternity.' Future manifestations, growth, change and decay are not inherently included for in the design. Literature(and some architectural movements), on the contrary, revel in the abandoned and the ruined, for their symbolic meaning. In literature, what a wall loses in its literal, structural value it gains in symbolic importance. On the other hand, memory is present in both. Architecture visited or remembered as the backdrop of an experience is memorable. That said, architecture is tangible, sensory, and tactile in a way that an unforgettable story is not. But, flipped again, it is writing that can best describe those architectural experiences. Furthermore, literature is descriptive, 'far removed' from design's more prescriptive nature. Havik also provides one of my favourite sentiments: "Viewed from this perspective, architecture no longer provides a happy ending, but instead allows stories to continue."
Over and over, the articles in this book compare and contrast the sister-arts of literature and architecture. Sometimes they appear to favour the written, sometimes the built, but always the rich, experiential potential of both. The ever-changing Venn diagram noted above was almost kaleidoscopic in its tipping, shifting, rotational spin, of alternative layering. For all that vertiginous spinning, the book is strengthened as a result. As one writer notes, "agreement in a dialogue can lead to a cul-de-sac." Perhaps then, the more discursive, the better. Or as another writer asks; "Is a complex, unconventional narrative better suited to exploring the play of conceptual possibilities than a simple conventional one?" In this instance, the answer (for me), is a decisive, non-cul-de-sac-y YES.
In terms of further reference for those interested in this area of research, some of the critical people that came up several times, included (in no specific order); Le Corbusier, Virginia Woolf, Orhan Pamuk, Rem Koolhaas, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Thomas Mann, Proust, Adolf Loos, Lefebvre, Jonathan Safran Foer, Heidegger, Charles Jencks, Sigfried Giedion, Steven Holl, and Wittgenstein. Each of these links offers the potential of yet another perspective, another inroad into the subject to explore. It is this wandering-wondering that Wittgenstein refers to in his penultimate sentence of Tractatus, when he suggests that we must climb up and on and over ideas, then throw away the ladder. Research is not for the armchair warrior – you have to roll up your sleeves, and clamber until you are giddy and footsore.
As the book is dual language, and only the bottom half is written in English, it is a fast read. As this book was as much a review of books as it was a review of architecture, the illustrations were sparse, but this did not damage the book's readability. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives, which in themselves remind me that architecture is best experienced by moving around and through space, rather than staring at it from a fixed location. Moreover, the multiple tones and variable lengths are akin to seeing a building in different seasons and weather conditions, thus generating different moods; lifting you up or crushing you down, raising questions or providing answers, catching you on an updraft or blowing you away. Moving through (rather than up and over) this subject was an enlightening and thought-provoking experience.
One investigation is how writers use architecture in literature as a "powerful shorthand introduction" to the themes and plot. For example, The Leopard's ramshackle palace foretells the book's central theme, which is the crumbling edifice of feudal domination. Or, in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse' the structure becomes a metaphor, that keeps circling, its all-seeing ever-open eye shedding continues light onto the world around it, just as literature itself does.
The articles show where the overlaps occur, and the differences. It is easy to imagine a Venn diagram where cultural production, abstract idealism and evocative reminiscences overlap, and also where architecture's physicality, sedentary and concrete nature separates it from literature's reflective, mobility and imaginative capacities.
The writer Gerrewey believes that the two 'hold hands' in modernism, both placing the individual and his utopian ideologies at the heart of everything that follows. However, elsewhere in the same article, he says, "Literature and architecture experience the world in the same way, but arrive at different decisions, and look in different directions." The two ideas placed side by side, create for me the impression of dance partners, as one steps forward, the other, holding hands, steps back to make room, then pivot, spin, step forward, step backward. Such a dance metaphor allows each to be its own, and yet both, are essentially in lock-step with the tune of the day, sashaying with historical moves, and the occasionally invented original one. Gerrewey sees the relationship himself but refers to it as two sides of the same coin, an amulet to wear to confront the future. I like this idea, but it lacks the time-space motion that he inferred. In the same article, it is noted that literature starts revolutions then runs from the fray, because it can analyse and eulogise, but it can not materially intervene. Architecture, on the other hand, does. It builds – whether it is via replacement, improvement, expansions or alterations; architecture builds, materially and inevitably, "because it cannot afford to linger over loss." [When Notre Dame Cathedral's spire burnt and fell, architects rushed to fill the void – for better or for worse – it's what we do.]
In another article, the writer Wim Cuyvers points out that writing is a one-way street, where the audience does not get the right of reply, whilst architecture, on the other hand, by its nature requires an interaction. Moreover, he says that literature requires a laying bare approach, whilst architecture is about sheltering and hunkering down. The two, he says, cannot be done simultaneously. As such, all the 'timid attempts' of architecture to attempt to tackle the 'important' questions that literature deals with daily, led to an architecture which was 'incomprehensible in its abstraction.' Once it had lost its meaning, it was essentially rendered mute. However, in the public spaces around the world, he sees similar, recurring, patterns of habitation and shelter. He believes that these litter-strewn and forgotten spaces can communicate, can be understood without words. In this way, architecture can 'jump over and above' literature.
Klaske Havik points out in her article, that time plays a crucial role in distinguishing the two fields. She suggests that architecture is focused on creating something today, which is also designed as 'something for eternity.' Future manifestations, growth, change and decay are not inherently included for in the design. Literature(and some architectural movements), on the contrary, revel in the abandoned and the ruined, for their symbolic meaning. In literature, what a wall loses in its literal, structural value it gains in symbolic importance. On the other hand, memory is present in both. Architecture visited or remembered as the backdrop of an experience is memorable. That said, architecture is tangible, sensory, and tactile in a way that an unforgettable story is not. But, flipped again, it is writing that can best describe those architectural experiences. Furthermore, literature is descriptive, 'far removed' from design's more prescriptive nature. Havik also provides one of my favourite sentiments: "Viewed from this perspective, architecture no longer provides a happy ending, but instead allows stories to continue."
Over and over, the articles in this book compare and contrast the sister-arts of literature and architecture. Sometimes they appear to favour the written, sometimes the built, but always the rich, experiential potential of both. The ever-changing Venn diagram noted above was almost kaleidoscopic in its tipping, shifting, rotational spin, of alternative layering. For all that vertiginous spinning, the book is strengthened as a result. As one writer notes, "agreement in a dialogue can lead to a cul-de-sac." Perhaps then, the more discursive, the better. Or as another writer asks; "Is a complex, unconventional narrative better suited to exploring the play of conceptual possibilities than a simple conventional one?" In this instance, the answer (for me), is a decisive, non-cul-de-sac-y YES.
In terms of further reference for those interested in this area of research, some of the critical people that came up several times, included (in no specific order); Le Corbusier, Virginia Woolf, Orhan Pamuk, Rem Koolhaas, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Thomas Mann, Proust, Adolf Loos, Lefebvre, Jonathan Safran Foer, Heidegger, Charles Jencks, Sigfried Giedion, Steven Holl, and Wittgenstein. Each of these links offers the potential of yet another perspective, another inroad into the subject to explore. It is this wandering-wondering that Wittgenstein refers to in his penultimate sentence of Tractatus, when he suggests that we must climb up and on and over ideas, then throw away the ladder. Research is not for the armchair warrior – you have to roll up your sleeves, and clamber until you are giddy and footsore.
As the book is dual language, and only the bottom half is written in English, it is a fast read. As this book was as much a review of books as it was a review of architecture, the illustrations were sparse, but this did not damage the book's readability. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives, which in themselves remind me that architecture is best experienced by moving around and through space, rather than staring at it from a fixed location. Moreover, the multiple tones and variable lengths are akin to seeing a building in different seasons and weather conditions, thus generating different moods; lifting you up or crushing you down, raising questions or providing answers, catching you on an updraft or blowing you away. Moving through (rather than up and over) this subject was an enlightening and thought-provoking experience.
Displaying 1 of 1 review