On Science Fiction, Heritage Architecture and Other Demons

In Conversation with Moira Crone

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.18.1.7683

Abstract

This conversation with Moira Crone was inspired by her science fiction novel The Not Yet. The interview opens with a question regarding the capacity of architectural heritage to carry past and present values, as well as our stories, and help us make sense of the world. With an emphasis on the historic French quarter in New Orleans, Crone explains why the preservation of the city’s most famous neighborhood was necessary for the plot and how in reality this preservation takes place. She discusses the difficult and cruel history of plantation homes in Louisiana, as well as moments in which the strict racial hierarchies broke down, creating possibilities for different ways of co-existence among its inhabitants. Crone unpacks her ideas about archetypical architectural spaces like the theater, and the subversive role it can play in contemporary or imaginative societies. The interview concludes with a discussion about science fiction’s connections to architectural thinking and the author’s creative process.

Author Biographies

Angeliki Sioli, Delft University of Technology

Angeliki Sioli is an architect and assistant professor of architecture at the Chair of Methods of Analysis and Imagination, TU Delft. She hails from Greece, where she obtained her professional diploma in architecture from the University of Thessaly and was granted a post-professional master’s in architectural theory and history by the National Technical University of Athens. She completed her PhD in the history and theory of architecture at McGill University. Her work on architecture, literature and pedagogy has been published in a number of books and presented at numerous conferences. She has edited the collected volumes Reading Architecture: Literary Imagination and Architectural Experience (Routledge, 2018), The Sound of Architecture: Acoustic Atmospheres in Place (Leuven University Press, 2022) and Architectures of Resistance: Negotiating Borders through Spatial Practices (Leuven University Press, 2024). Before joining TU Delft, Sioli taught both undergraduate and graduate courses at McGill University in Montreal, Tec de Monterrey in Mexico, and Louisiana State University in the US.

Aleksandar Staničić, Delft University of Technology

Aleksandar Staničić is an architect and assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. He was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at TU Delft (2018–20), a postdoctoral fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT (2017–18), and a research scholar at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University (2016–17). His most recent work includes the edited volume War Diaries: Design After the Destruction of Art and Architecture (University of Virginia Press, 2022) and numerous research articles in various journals, including The Journal of Architecture, Footprint and Architecture and Culture.

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Published

2024-09-30

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2024): Issue # 34 | Narrating Shared Futures

Section

Interview

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Angeliki Sioli, Aleksandar Staničić

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