Laboratory for Architecture & Literature

No 3 (2019)
Reading(s) and Writing(s). Unfolding Processes of Transversal Writing
2019-12-23
No 2 (2018)
Inscriptions: Tracing Place. History and Memory in Architectural en Literary Practice
2018-10-22
No 1 (2018)
Literary Methods in Architectural Education
2018-04-09

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No 3 (2019)
Reading(s) and Writing(s). Unfolding Processes of Transversal Writing

This issue of Writingplace Journal, Reading(s) and Writing(s), focuses on the complex process of writing itself, and in particular on the question of reading and responding to texts. By presenting not only resulting texts, but discreet readings of works in process integrated with the discussions that unfold, the issue reveals complex modes of writing that move between the scholarly and the fictional. 

Edited by Catharina Gabrielsson, Hélène Frichot, Klaske Havik, Marko Jobst

2019-12-23
https://doi.org/10.7480/writingplace.3

No 3 (2019)
Reading(s) and Writing(s). Unfolding Processes of Transversal Writing

This issue of Writingplace Journal, Reading(s) and Writing(s), focuses on the complex process of writing itself, and in particular on the question of reading and responding to texts. By presenting not only resulting texts, but discreet readings of works in process integrated with the discussions that unfold, the issue reveals complex modes of writing that move between the scholarly and the fictional. 

Edited by Catharina Gabrielsson, Hélène Frichot, Klaske Havik, Marko Jobst

2019-12-23
https://doi.org/10.7480/writingplace.3

Editorial

  • Reading(s) and Writing(s)

    This issue of Writingplace Journal, Reading(s) and Writing(s), focuses on the complex process of writing itself, and in particular on the question of reading and responding to texts. By presenting not only resulting texts, but discreet readings of works in process integrated with the discussions that unfold, the issue reveals complex modes of writing that move between the scholarly and the fictional. It draws attention to the questions of authorial voice, the voice of the reader, and the voice of the possible protagonists of the text, even if this as an object, space or indeed, place. If the authors could be said to engage in various acts of ‘writing place’, as per this journal’s general thematic focus, what kinds of places do they bring into existence? Furthermore, which modes of writing are deemed most appropriate in order to create both evocative and critical accounts of places?

    Driven by a concern to reinvigorate space-related research through the means of writing, the texts in this issue have evolved through the collaborations of a group of affiliated thinkers and practitioners, within a series of reading and writing workshops in the context of the project Transversal Writing.2 Challenging the means and formats of conventional academic writing, this project sets out to transgress the hierarchies between academic and non-academic knowledge, theory and practice, discipline and profession. Contesting the reification of architecture that maintains that the building is a discrete object – whose values are materialized through real estate, limits defined by property borders and agency reduced to profit-making – what we call ‘transversal writing’ traces the lines of connection between architectural conceptions and their effects, between decisions and materializations, forms and affordances. The project acknowledges how architecture is shaped by words, imagery and ideas long before it is transformed into bricks and mortar. Recognizing architecture as a product of the collective imaginary – an act of human creation – is to identify the potentiality in how words, images and physical entities have a capacity to proliferate, spread and generate unforeseeable effects, far beyond the intentions of the architect.

    This issue of Writingplace Journal, Reading(s) and Writing(s), focuses on the complex process of writing itself, and in particular on the question of reading and responding to texts. By presenting not only resulting texts, but discreet readings of works in process integrated with the discussions that unfold, the issue reveals complex modes of writing that move between the scholarly and the fictional. It draws attention to the questions of authorial voice, the voice of the reader, and the voice of the possible protagonists of the text, even if this as an object, space or indeed, place. If the authors could be said to engage in various acts of ‘writing place’, as per this journal’s general thematic focus, what kinds of places do they bring into existence? Furthermore, which modes of writing are deemed most appropriate in order to create both evocative and critical accounts of places?

    Driven by a concern to reinvigorate space-related research through the means of...

    This issue of Writingplace Journal, Reading(s) and Writing(s), focuses on the complex process of writing itself, and in particular on the question of reading and responding to texts. By presenting not only resulting texts, but discreet readings of works in process integrated with the...

    Catharina Gabrielsson, Hélène Frichot, Klaske Havik, Marko Jobst
    4-9

Articles

  • Foray in a Modern Reserve

    During research for the Arts Council funded project East Sussex Modern (2016), Photolanguage (Nigel Green & Robin Wilson), visited sites relating to the legacy of the modernist Borough and Water Engineer Sidney Little (1885-1961) in the county of East Sussex, U.K.. These included the impounding reservoirs of Powdermill (1932) and Darwell (1949). The landscapes surrounding the reservoirs have evolved into mature woodland nature reserves and represent complex terrains of land-use and property ownership. ‘Foray in a Modern Reserve’ (Part I), an image and text ‘portrait’ and re-imagining of these terrains, is a composite text, an assemblage of diverse texts of occupiers and users of these terrains over time, from Photolanguage’s own observations made on site visits, to the archival records of Sidney Little’s description of the reservoir infrastructure, to the accounts of UCL archaeologists, Angling and Ramblers clubs and local landowners. It is a vehicle through which to explore an experimental method of spatial writing at the intersection of archival research, visual and textual documentary practice, and visual and textual fiction-practice. Imagery interplays with the text’s narrative structure to generate its own narrative and descriptive trajectories. Through the combination of different modes of the landscape’s description, through its successive spatialization across different agendas of movement and occupation, ‘Foray in a Modern Reserve’ constructs a utopic portrait of the modern reservoir reserve. As a composite text, it traces the intersection and dispersal of desire and agency across the terrain as an ‘inspection’ that must discover and construct its own object, and propose its own figural ‘solution’ to the landscape’s latent equations. 

    During research for the Arts Council funded project East Sussex Modern (2016), Photolanguage (Nigel Green & Robin Wilson), visited sites relating to the legacy of the modernist Borough and Water Engineer Sidney Little (1885-1961) in the county of East Sussex, U.K.. These included the impounding reservoirs of Powdermill (1932) and Darwell (1949). The landscapes surrounding the reservoirs have evolved into mature woodland nature reserves and represent complex terrains of land-use and property ownership. ‘Foray in a Modern Reserve’ (Part I), an image and text ‘portrait’ and re-imagining of these terrains, is a composite text, an assemblage of diverse texts of occupiers and users of these terrains over time, from Photolanguage’s own observations made on site visits, to the archival records of Sidney Little’s description of the reservoir infrastructure, to the accounts of UCL archaeologists, Angling and Ramblers clubs and local landowners. It is a vehicle...

    During research for the Arts Council funded project East Sussex Modern (2016), Photolanguage (Nigel Green & Robin Wilson), visited sites relating to the legacy of the modernist Borough and Water Engineer Sidney Little (1885-1961) in the county of East Sussex, U.K.. These included...

    Robin Wilson
    10-31
  • Real Estates in Cyprus

    This edited ethnographic diary, produced during a research and teaching stint in Cyprus, takes in the island landscape, politics and underlying economic forces dramatically shaping the environment in order to reveal a complex picture across a variety of scales and analytical registers. The aim of this diary is to understand the recent real-estate transactions launched by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus and selling EU-Citizenship in tandem with real estate, particularly as high-end luxury development along the coast. This understanding of land ownership and real estate evolves around the notion of territoriality, which defines territory as a cultural and social product and which includes the Lefebvrian dimension of lived space. The fragmented form of the diary entry will allow to cut across the different registers mentioned above; the work of the editing process will consist in framing the subjective position of the self as a political.

    This text is introduced by a reading compiled by Hélène Frichot

    This edited ethnographic diary, produced during a research and teaching stint in Cyprus, takes in the island landscape, politics and underlying economic forces dramatically shaping the environment in order to reveal a complex picture across a variety of scales and analytical registers. The aim of this diary is to understand the recent real-estate transactions launched by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus and selling EU-Citizenship in tandem with real estate, particularly as high-end luxury development along the coast. This understanding of land ownership and real estate evolves around the notion of territoriality, which defines territory as a cultural and social product and which includes the Lefebvrian dimension of lived space. The fragmented form of the diary entry will allow to cut across the different registers mentioned above; the work of the editing process will consist in framing the subjective position of the self as a political.

    This text is introduced by...

    This edited ethnographic diary, produced during a research and teaching stint in Cyprus, takes in the island landscape, politics and underlying economic forces dramatically shaping the environment in order to reveal a complex picture across a variety of scales and analytical registers. The aim...

    Anne Kockelkorn
    33-57
  • Skopje: The Multiple Faces of the City

    This contribution offers a series of lyrically framed observations of an architectural educator on repeated visits to the city of Skopje. It reflects on the complex histories and processes shaping the city, from the remnants of the Metabolist city to the neo-classical vocabulary of a reconstituted national identity. Historically, the city of Skopje has been characterized by a series of urban abruptions: from the earthquake of 1963 via the end of Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars, to the recent tensions between nationalist tendencies and the growing migrant population from Kosovo and Albania. These abruptions have resulted, on an urban and architectural level, in a great number of spatial contrasts: the fine spatial grain of the old bazaar area as opposed to the large metabolist urban scheme, introduced by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange after the 1963 earthquake; the contrast between the two sides of the river Vardar; the surreal Skopje 2014 project which consisted the erection of fake neo-classical buildings, fountains and an “arc of triumph” on prominent sites across the city, aiming to establish a heroic nationalist narrative of the ancient Macedonia of Alexander the Great. The contribution is composed of a series of fragments which aim to reveal, through the perspective of different characters, both a story line about the urban transformations in Skopje, and an account of spatial practices of everyday life.

    The text is introduced by a reading compiled by Marko Jobst

    This contribution offers a series of lyrically framed observations of an architectural educator on repeated visits to the city of Skopje. It reflects on the complex histories and processes shaping the city, from the remnants of the Metabolist city to the neo-classical vocabulary of a reconstituted national identity. Historically, the city of Skopje has been characterized by a series of urban abruptions: from the earthquake of 1963 via the end of Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars, to the recent tensions between nationalist tendencies and the growing migrant population from Kosovo and Albania. These abruptions have resulted, on an urban and architectural level, in a great number of spatial contrasts: the fine spatial grain of the old bazaar area as opposed to the large metabolist urban scheme, introduced by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange after the 1963 earthquake; the contrast between the two sides of the river Vardar; the surreal Skopje 2014 project which consisted the erection of...

    This contribution offers a series of lyrically framed observations of an architectural educator on repeated visits to the city of Skopje. It reflects on the complex histories and processes shaping the city, from the remnants of the Metabolist city to the neo-classical vocabulary of a...

    Klaske Havik
    58-75
  • Belgrade Baroque

    This text, composed of two layers, brings together queer auto-fictions with the architectural histories of an elusive Serbian Baroque in the city of Belgrade. It explores the issues of heteronormativity, nationhood and religion. It is an autofiction that places special emphasis on the siting of memories in Belgrade, Serbia – Yugoslavia as it was – and focuses specifically on the Cathedral Church of Archangel Michael, one of the rare examples of what could be understood as second generation Baroque architecture in the orthodox Christian country. The desired aim of the broader project is to perform an act of queering of the Serbian ideological, national and religious frameworks, of Belgrade and its buildings, and of academic modes of relating architectural and urban histories. An aspect of this process was the approach to illustrations, which are textual: the footnoted fragments that run alongside the main narrative thrust of the text are simultaneously its illustrations and their own captions. Sometimes reflexive, at other times tangential, they hint at a second level of research that lies beneath the seemingly literary treatment of the piece.

    The text is introduced by a reading compiled by Naomi Stead

    This text, composed of two layers, brings together queer auto-fictions with the architectural histories of an elusive Serbian Baroque in the city of Belgrade. It explores the issues of heteronormativity, nationhood and religion. It is an autofiction that places special emphasis on the siting of memories in Belgrade, Serbia – Yugoslavia as it was – and focuses specifically on the Cathedral Church of Archangel Michael, one of the rare examples of what could be understood as second generation Baroque architecture in the orthodox Christian country. The desired aim of the broader project is to perform an act of queering of the Serbian ideological, national and religious frameworks, of Belgrade and its buildings, and of academic modes of relating architectural and urban histories. An aspect of this process was the approach to illustrations, which are textual: the footnoted fragments that run alongside the main narrative thrust of the text are simultaneously its illustrations and...

    This text, composed of two layers, brings together queer auto-fictions with the architectural histories of an elusive Serbian Baroque in the city of Belgrade. It explores the issues of heteronormativity, nationhood and religion. It is an autofiction that places special emphasis on the siting...

    Marko Jobst
    76-92
  • Decolonizing Your Island Imaginary

    Hélène Frichot’s contribution offers an approach to decolonising through fiction, where cross-generational memories of family life in the Seychelles are used to critically illuminate colonial histories. The function of this experimental essay is to offer a preparatory test-site for a future project that may, or may not, come to fruition. What is at stake are processes of decolonisation, specifically of spatial memories, including the residual hold of colonial imaginaries and how these might be creatively critiqued. The story begins on an apparent island paradise, in the grounds of a colonial plantation house coloured sepia, shades of mahogany and amber hue, as all the world seemingly sleeps its way through siesta. An encounter is witnessed between a returned colonial brother and a younger sister the aftermath of which will concatenate through the following three parts of the projected novella. The second part takes place in Perth, the most geographically isolated city in the world, in hyper-saturated Super-8 colours, brilliant fuchsias, lilacs, yellows and blues. Following an evening of sun darkened children’s’ limbs lingering on a makeshift tarpaulin picnic blanket laid out on a backyard of buffalo grass, two girls sneak into the depths of a migrant family home, into an aunt’s closed bedroom to paint their faces in eyeshadows and lipsticks, only to be suddenly discovered. Part three is sketched in cold translucent greys, and deep brown shadows, witness to a young woman venturing far from home. She is hosted by a reclusive family member in an old apartment on Rue Buffon overlooking the Jardin des Plantes, as she prepares herself for a year of study in a far-off land that is both familiar and strange. Sitting in a stone courtyard on campus, holding a book between her hands – attended on the right by the statue of a poet, and on the left by the statue of a biologist – she hears a noise as though the long-lost sea were approaching her. A massive swell of student bodies floods the courtyard, taking her up in its wake. She recognizes the voice of someone who cries out: It is Forbidden to Forbid! Finally, at the centre of Empire in royal blue, indigo, and chalk with burnt orange highlights, a moment of culmination will be discovered. Temporal registers begin to slip and slide: a young man suffers a humiliating sexual encounter as an older man is confronted ascending from the basement flat of a government in exile. A suite of colonial imaginaries is, from one scene to the next, composed and decomposed through processes of decolonisation.

    The text is introduced by a reading compiled by Kim Gurney

    Hélène Frichot’s contribution offers an approach to decolonising through fiction, where cross-generational memories of family life in the Seychelles are used to critically illuminate colonial histories. The function of this experimental essay is to offer a preparatory test-site for a future project that may, or may not, come to fruition. What is at stake are processes of decolonisation, specifically of spatial memories, including the residual hold of colonial imaginaries and how these might be creatively critiqued. The story begins on an apparent island paradise, in the grounds of a colonial plantation house coloured sepia, shades of mahogany and amber hue, as all the world seemingly sleeps its way through siesta. An encounter is witnessed between a returned colonial brother and a younger sister the aftermath of which will concatenate through the following three parts of the projected novella. The second part takes place in Perth, the most geographically isolated city in the...

    Hélène Frichot’s contribution offers an approach to decolonising through fiction, where cross-generational memories of family life in the Seychelles are used to critically illuminate colonial histories. The function of this experimental essay is to offer a preparatory test-site for a...

    Hélène Frichot
    93-109
  • Offscreen: Making It and Faking It

    This text of creative nonfiction follows the making of a film set in Cape Town – how it is assembled, where it goes, what it becomes, how it gets dis-assembled and recycled into other forms. It does so from the perspective of the set-builders, the architects of scaffolding for commercials and other events. The research includes observation, formal interviews and visual documentation. This particular set- build for an insurance client becomes a human-tiered cake, a door that swings open into another dimension, and a manhole cover that becomes a portal. Alongside, a former theatre set reincarnates into a festival late-night venue. The set acts as a prosthetic, a stand-in which straddles the liminal space of both making it and faking it. More deeply, the storyline considers the role of human ingenuity in a world where the handmade object gets repurposed into a techno-aesthetic device. The backstage viewpoint is pointedly focused upon how blue-collar artisans navigate logistics, scale and complexity to create inventive forms, and how their onward trajectories become enfolded into speculative circuits. It is also a story about place: the set-building workshop is located in a former train depot in a semi-industrial precinct facing urbanization pressures while the film studio is a Hollywood-esque hub of cutting-edge technologies. This story, in short, is about conjuring new imaginaries from a Cape Town site of making and how this may speak to a future world of work.

    The text is introduced by a reading compiled by Catharina Gabrielsson 

    This text of creative nonfiction follows the making of a film set in Cape Town – how it is assembled, where it goes, what it becomes, how it gets dis-assembled and recycled into other forms. It does so from the perspective of the set-builders, the architects of scaffolding for commercials and other events. The research includes observation, formal interviews and visual documentation. This particular set- build for an insurance client becomes a human-tiered cake, a door that swings open into another dimension, and a manhole cover that becomes a portal. Alongside, a former theatre set reincarnates into a festival late-night venue. The set acts as a prosthetic, a stand-in which straddles the liminal space of both making it and faking it. More deeply, the storyline considers the role of human ingenuity in a world where the handmade object gets repurposed into a techno-aesthetic device. The backstage viewpoint is pointedly focused upon how blue-collar artisans navigate logistics,...

    This text of creative nonfiction follows the making of a film set in Cape Town – how it is assembled, where it goes, what it becomes, how it gets dis-assembled and recycled into other forms. It does so from the perspective of the set-builders, the architects of scaffolding for commercials...

    Kim Gurney
    110-130
  • Ordinary Walking, Ordinary Writing

    Naomi Stead pursues a theoretical inquiry into the relationship between writing and walking based on author’s previous ficto-critical texts based in Stockholm, Sydney and Brisbane. The text was inspired by a small article that appeared in the daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia in March 2018, which described the effect of different linguistic formulations used by phone dispatchers at ambulance stations, when someone telephoned in need of urgent medical attention. The story was about the difference between the dispatcher asking ‘what happened’ – which tended to send the caller off into a longwinded narrative account with much extraneous detail – and when the dispatcher asked ‘what’s happened’ – which caused the caller to report, quickly and directly, the sequence of events that had led to the medical emergency. The difference between these two modes of communication – the division of ‘what’ and ‘what’s,’ the single letter – was measured in long seconds, even minutes, and could easily be the difference between life and death.

    This text is introduced by a reading compiled by Robin Wilson

    Naomi Stead pursues a theoretical inquiry into the relationship between writing and walking based on author’s previous ficto-critical texts based in Stockholm, Sydney and Brisbane. The text was inspired by a small article that appeared in the daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia in March 2018, which described the effect of different linguistic formulations used by phone dispatchers at ambulance stations, when someone telephoned in need of urgent medical attention. The story was about the difference between the dispatcher asking ‘what happened’ – which tended to send the caller off into a longwinded narrative account with much extraneous detail – and when the dispatcher asked ‘what’s happened’ – which caused the caller to report, quickly and directly, the sequence of events that had led to the medical emergency. The difference between these two modes of communication – the division of ‘what’ and ‘what’s,’ the single letter – was measured in long...

    Naomi Stead pursues a theoretical inquiry into the relationship between writing and walking based on author’s previous ficto-critical texts based in Stockholm, Sydney and Brisbane. The text was inspired by a small article that appeared in the daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia in March...

    Naomi Stead
    131-147
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