This issue of the Writingplace Journal examines how different narrative methods can be used to appraise and imagine urban places. Edited by Lorin Niculae, Jorge Mejía Hernández, Klaske Havik, Mark Proosten https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/writingplace/issue/view/878
Read more about OUT NOW: Writingplace #5 Narrative Methods for Writing Urban PlacesMeaningfulness, Appropriation and Integration of/in City Narratives
Call for Papers
Within the framework of the COST Action Writing Urban Places: New Narratives of the European City—a European network of scholars interested in urban narratives—the terms of meaningfulness, appropriation and integration have been identified as opportunities for a multi- and interdisciplinary exploration from the perspectives of architecture (including landscape architecture), literary theory, urbanism, sociology, ethnology, fine arts, cultural studies, civil engineering, design, aesthetics, semiotics, anthropology, psychology, communication studies, cultural heritage, to name only a few.
Read more about Call for Papers Issue #6
Happy 2021!
Our latest issues, #3 Reading(s) and Writing(s). Unfolding `Processes of Transversal Writing and #4 Choices and Strategies of Spatial Imagination are now also available in print!
Read more about Writingplace journal new issues in print
Envelope of Silver
Envelopes of silver, capturing and fusing purples, pinks and yellows
When at dusk
The building changes appearance
Than is shows
dancing along with the street
lights are reflected, people are multiplied
Read more about Envelope of SilverThis 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 also 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
Read more about New Issue: Reading(s) and Writing(s). Unfolding Processes of Transversal WritingMarks
A Leporello for the Binckhorst forgotten monuments
We wandered looking for the stories first unseen to the naked eye. We looked for marks that proved the autochthonous inhabitant of Binckhorst, and the ruins that are the trace of an industrial past shifting to a service based and housing area. Our monuments are rather unconventional, Mac and Donna, The Angry Lady, Crossfit Ninjas, they are examples of the stories that, after widening our perspective on the area and being sensible to it, we discovered.
Falling in
love with
walls, gates,
steep
streets
as
a
mild
compen-
sation
this is our stretch gingerly chosen
it works for each all and what we do
Gancho's kids run the margin
'tween walkway and bus lane
snatch a purse phone necklace
Read more about thievesWhile researching the Binckhorst area in Den Haag for the master 1 studio of Methods&Analysis, a literary/narrative excursive helped to get a better understanding of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
The result is a local newspaper which articulates a future perspective after the redevelopment of the area.
Read more about The BINCKIESWe received the following call for papers from our colleagues of the Association for Literary Urban Studies / Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies:
(Un)Fair Cities. Equity, Ideology and Utopia in Urban Texts
University of Limerick, 12-13 December 2019
Read more about (Un)Fair Cities. Equity, Ideology and Utopia in Urban TextsWe received the following call for papers:
“Phenomenographies. Describing urban and architectural atmospheres” of the Ambiances Journal. The issue is coordinated by Mikkel Bille, Federico De Matteis, Tonino Griffero and Andrea Jelić
The deadline for the submission of full papers is 14 April 2019.
Read more about Call for Papers: Phenomenographies
Our proposal Writing Urban Places. New Narratives of the European City has been accepted by the European network grant COST. We are much looking forward to collaborate with our international colleagues on this four-year research project, of which you will find a summary below.
Read more about COST network Writing Urban PlacesBy Jacob Voorthuis
Place a placeless point
where you might be
and another on that tree;
Measure and trace the movement
of the line
throughout a single day.
Read more about Line poemVenice Biennale
The city is floating: ever more dense more and more people are entering. The city shivers.
Read more about Venice Biennale
Last Tuesday, October 23rd, we gathered to celebrate the first two issues of the Writingplace Journal. The afternoon offers a series of inspiring talks, both about the trajectory of the Writingplace project at large, and about the content of the journal issue.
October 2018
Imagination can take us to unthinkable places and face a whole world that could only be dreamt of. It can take us to a city under the sea in the midst of chaos or to a tyrannical and savage empire over the clouds, in which the slaughtered are thrown from the heights above, just to fall into the ocean to a city in the midst of chaos.
Read more about The Magic of ImaginationOctober 2018
We are happy to announce the presentation of the first two issues of the Writingplace Journal for Architecture and Literature. soon in Delft:
August 2018
an architecture that means no good
indifferent to beauty and comfort
hopeless
Read more about an architecture that blooms forlornJuly 2018
THE GARDEN & THE BOTANIST
BOTANY
‘Botany, branch of biology that deals with the study of plants, including their structure, properties, and biochemical processes. Also included are plant classification and the study of plant diseases and of interactions with the environment.’1
Read more about PROSPECT COTTAGE*June 2018
I effuse into the
voice of your breath,
not only in words,
Read more about Through the skin of an inkMay 2018
The sound of the gale woke them up
before dawn
warm bunk beds behind they tiptoed through the darkness
across the hallway downstairs through the kitchen of the old, old house
Read more about kitesMarch 2018
I saw the small boy sitting on the ground outside
next to the porch of the old, old house
he was playing with a twig
Read more about a snakeJanuary 2018
Presenting a double reading of architectural spaces, this article aims to bring together works of the architects Alvar Aalto and Rogelio Salmona and identify some shared themes in their architectural approaches.
Read more about Readings: Aalto and Salmona
December 2017
is the poet closer
to understanding place
than the architect?
Read more about the poet and the architectDecember 2017
(Canción del Adiós 1)
A mist built by artificial fireflies
is unwinding
around his fragile presence,
as an embodied quivering
near an unreachably free Seagull 2,
first – in flights aerial,
second – in hoverings embraced.
Read more about 'Purification' of Desire
November 2017
These rooms I’ve been describing are mostly bedrooms; meaning rooms where a bed is used to sleep, or “slaapkamers”, as they’re called here.
Read more about many rooms, 10
November 2017
I
in that it speaks
it tells of time
of its founding fathers
of the builders, with words and stones
Read more about Ciudad Abierta _ in that it speaks...November 2017
“I couldn’t say I’ll make it the same or I’ll make it different, there were no things to copy, nobody knew what a line was, straight or curved, or even a dot, or a protuberance or a cavity.
Read more about COSMICOMICS*
November 2017
I
there are hardly any streets
- paved, with houses
on each side -
Read more about Ciudad Abierta, ValparaisoOctober 2017
Sometimes, the fragmented flow of the narrative comes to a limit of vulgar sincerity. The overlapping of thematically heterogenous windows reflects mutual permeation and influence of the design problems. The porous depth of their materiality is most visible through the closeperception of its (locally) organic appearance.
Read more about Thinking the Elsewhere: [a fragile order-creating curtain between the architect and the Place]
October 2017
Mr. Quiñónez came in first thing in the morning, carrying a small plastic bucket, a sturdy broom, and a small shovel. Slowly, he swept the concrete slab with short, sharp strokes, uniformly directed towards a specific point on the slab.
Read more about many rooms, 9October 2017
- embracing and enfolding
a Balance
between
a novelty and
Read more about A Spiral PromenadeSeptember 2017
The image of this room is quite foggy in my mind, perhaps because I was mostly sad there.
We’d moved from what was supposed to be our dream home, to this much smaller, very cramped flat. Life had suddenly shrunk to a tiny room, which I had to share with my sister.
Read more about many rooms, 8August 2017
standing still in water
in their frame of basalt from former times:
the poles, like gentlemen turned into stone
Read more about Stone Heads
June 2017
an infinitesimal
almost capillary fissure
on the thinnest layer of coating
has stared back at me
Read more about many rooms, 7May 2017
light entered through the coloured holes
blue and green and purple patches
of time, turning around the tower
Read more about shadow of light
May 2017
1. Car
Wet cobbles, the shuddering car creates weird noises, might want to slow down a little.
Drizzle on the windscreen
Can’t see a thing,
the rhythm of the wipers connects to the song on the radio.
Read more about The dune, or, Cathedrals of the MindMay 2017
Elio was a man made of time and space, that is light, as everybody knows.
He lived alone in a circular house, he had a room for each day of the year, each one with a dawn door to enter in the morning and a dusk one to retire at night.
April 2017
Landmark/Statue
I am Admiral Jose Prudencio Padilla Lopez, leader of the Colombian fleet, liberator of Santa Marta and Cartagena, scourge of the Spanish admiralty.
Read more about the City’s Image by its Elements | Monologues by TeusaquilloApril 2017
In Ljubograd,
built most perturbedly
is the love among the birds.
Read more about treetops, tremblingApril 2017
From the threshold, I could see the cleanliness of the terrazzo floor, made with irregular cuts of marble of different sizes and colors, no bigger than the palm of my hands; cast in place with a mix of white cement and smaller granite pebbles, and polished to a glossy shine.
Read more about many rooms, 6
April 2017
Mr. F woke up one morning like many others. It may have been Sunday, but then again, Mr. F is not one that makes a difference between work days and weekends, he’s a lucky one. Lets assume though that it was Sunday, for the sake of all the other fellows who abide to the seven day week.
Read more about Maurits' tenants
April 2017
Man, myth and material meet in four places in Bogotá.
A series of four poems.
~
Read more about Four Places in Bogotá (4/4): Centro de Memoria, Paz y ReconciliaciónApril 2017
A wall to the east
to catch the new sun
through the jagged peaks.
Read more about Four Walls
March 2017
Europe offers an abundance of fictionalised landscapes and cities. The growing research area of literary geography and literary cartography aims at visibly rendering such complex overlays of real and fictional geographies.
Read more about Towards a Geography of European FictionMarch 2017
Man, myth and material meet in four places in Bogotá.
~
Read more about Four Places in Bogotá (3/4): Universidad Nacional
March 2017
Man, myth and material meet in four places in Bogotá.
A series of four poems.
~
Read more about Four Places in Bogotá (2/4): Plaza Bolivar
March 2017
To dream a world of words
and words that are worlds.
To play with memory and feelings,
the mind’s hand searching,
feeling, grasping; scraping.
March 2017
‘I became very interested in the paradigm of science, where you affirm something
and want to prove it, and your only chance is to provide your listeners with the tools
of your research so that they can verify your hypothesis.’ 1
Read more about JEWELLERY PERSPECTIVES
March 2017
where does one reside when
floating above trees or seas from place
to place, arriving in a silent night, exchanging,
Read more about arrival, somewhereFebruary 2017
Man, myth and material meet in four places in Bogotá.
A series of four poems.
~
CEMENTERIO CENTRAL
Read more about Four Places in Bogotá (1/4)February 2017
Georges Perec wrote:
"What does it mean, to live in a room? Is to live in a place to take possession of it? What does taking possession of a place mean?
Read more about theme: roomsFebruary 2017
Cramped and literally full of nooks and crannies.
Not a clean floor plan for sure.
Instead a convoluted set of little additions subtractions protrusions cuts.
Read more about many rooms, 5
February 2017
I hear the groanings of a warm mountain scent,
-solar flares casted through celestial pillars;
the windows, filled with forest, birds and clouds
are flowing under the wound,
Read more about Degraded travelogueJanuary 2017
Long before satellite navigation, GPS and sonar techniques, our brave sailors relied on a network of light signals, warning them for shallow waters, unexpected cliffs or harbour entries. The duty of maintaining and keeping up these light sources was a difficult and respected job that went hand in hand with the latest engineering techniques of the previous 23 centuries.
Read more about Lighthouse, A house with a beaconJanuary 2017
The Wounded Pot
A belly a wounded pot
Perforated
Read more about Interpreting Atmosphere: Kettle HouseJanuary 2017
I stand in a well, an opening in the solid linearity of the rest. I reach up.
My strong core of four pillars glows from within, while I am suspended in a constant
balancing act – holding platform after platform joint by steps (how many little steps?)
Read more about Interpreting Atmosphere: the Red Stairs
January 2017
Even before entering the flat, one could have a glimpse of the room where I fell in love with books form the hallway, where two old blue Schindler elevators and the stairs of the building landed. Facing this hallway, and the narrow patio it overlooked, was the room’s window, with its gorgeous glass louvers, in the style of the 1950s.
Read more about many rooms, 4
January 2017
They used to make fun of me, standing in this awkward corner of the plot, neglecting the alignment of all the other houses.
Read more about Villa AndersenDecember 2016
Grumpy old attic
It’s cold, dark and lonely up here
That’s how I like it
I see your kind
December 2016
where I faced death
“My Father’s house has many rooms...”
- John, 14:2
Above the room where I faced death was a high, pitched gable roof, built with rustic wooden beams and trusses, covered with slightly overlapping asbestos-cement # 6 Eternit corrugated sheets, hooked with a few steel, mostly corroded clamps.
Read more about many rooms, 3November 2016
in a world of rooms to meet
we meet and we pass by
lives hardly touch but coincide
we then remain in signs
October 2016
The room where everything fell apart had a semi-circular floor plan, pivoting around a spiral staircase, outside.
The stair landing paved with grey linoleum gave way to a broad threshold, with two white wooden doors, each with a rectangular moulding with concave curved corners.
Read more about many rooms, 2October 2016
The room where I was truly happy made a sharp corner, on a Flatiron-ish second floor. One entered facing the corner, through a deep threshold, between built-in closets, with dark brown triplex doors and detailed glass applications on their upper halves.
Read more about many rooms, 1September 2016
floating above clouds between two lands, from the open and ambiguous, back to the organised and ordered.
Read more about From aboveJune 2016
upon losing center I have noticed
that the effort which keeps a world in place
also threatens to bring it down
Read more about archJune 2016
Take 1. Saturday, around noon. After heavy rain.
Character: Heka, Jack Russell, 2 years old
Heka gets out of the car and takes the first hill as a crazy rocket, not minding the wet grass streaking her belly. Immediately, she disappears out of sight.
March 2016
Kent State University College of Architecture & Environmental Design (CAED) has organized theGraphic Novels / Novel Architecturesymposium to explore constructive and projective relationships between architecture and comics.
Read more about Graphic Novels / Novel ArchitectureMarch 2016
The House of Books series indeed ignites a whole series of reference projects: houses of books, houses for books, small libraries, installations and pavilions literally or metaphorically building upon the knowledge constructed in books.
Read more about with or withoutMarch 2016
In the years that followed the 1974 Revolution in Portugal, the country received several political refugees from Chile and Argentina.
Read more about Parthenon of BooksMarch 2016
If I were to build a house where we would meet, my reader, it should probably be a house of books, of meeting thoughts. On the ground floor: books for daily use, to talk, to find common ground. Architecture books, some older heroes, some brave new worlds,...
Read more about House of Book IIFebruary 2016
Two joints articulate the division of the Andes, as it moves northward across the Putumayo basin. The “knots” of Pastos and Almaguer, disentangle the thick thread that comes all the way from Tierra del Fuego into three distinct claws, obviously named Western, Central and Eastern cordilleras.
Read more about (to) shadowFebruary 2016
When a silent speck of dust of yours
passes next to my soul,
like ink
I overflow inside me,
Read more about Populus Tremula
January 2016
a harbor is a place to depart from
the restless mind
finds an anchor point
in water, wind and expectation
December 2015
some cities were founded by chance
comfortably reclined against an old meander
a protective hill, a vantage point
Read more about some cities
December 2015
One of the harbor cities in Europe in a constant process of transformation is Tallinn, Estonia. Simultaneously front and backside, the coastal area north of Tallinn city centre is an ambiguous place.
Read more about the marginsNovember 2015
How silently hollow are
the bricks that flow through lonely walls,
like a stony droplet over eyelashes,
Read more about Lozenge, contributed by Viktorija Bogdanova
October 2015
again I leave
the land between our lands
the city where our story lingers
Read more about linger
October 2015
Stockholm is fractal. Those who live there inhabit smaller and smaller islands, with an increasingly ambiguous relationship to water, before they scatter out, like the pollen resting on the waters surface into the fractal dust that is the archipelago.
Read more about A Fractal Tectonic In the Work of Sigurd Lewerentz
September 2015
After so many sketches, there is one that remains. Made almost two decades ago, the connection that very sketch has set in motion is still vital. An elastic connection with that land of rocks and water, of trees and human, architectural gestures.
Read more about CoastAugust 2015
how they entangle, intertwine
with one another
with the space they occupy
Read more about battensAugust 2015
Hidden….,
Out of sight , out of mind. I find you
crawling your way up
Read more about Hidden
July 2015
Testing the limits of the obvious
Read more about sketch: Jørn Utzon's platforms and plateaus
July 2015
PROPOSAL FOR A MARITIME MUSEUM, NORWAY.
Read more about ON THE ROCK, BY THE SEA, ALONG THE SHOREJuly 2015
(Novara, MapaMudo by Luis Carmelo)
The cities drawn by Luis Carmelo, a Portuguese writer with several books published and founder of the online creative writing school EC.ON, began by being a humble mode to reinvent his own pace.
Read more about Mute MapsJune 2015
it could have been the blank, mute wall
faced for hours
revealing a simple truth
Read more about meditationJune 2015
We gathered in a restaurant I remembered, in a town where I had lived. Its windows facing a small canal, on its side a quiet alley. We sat around a wooden table in the back of the room, on what seemed to be a former church bench. Some paintings of Venice -where some of us had been, last year- on the walls.
Read more about GatheringMay 2015
At the department of Wohnbau at the RWTH-faculty of Architecture, we design more than just houses, we particularly focus on the study of dwelling. We see dwelling as a verb, an action that is influenced by culture and forms the basis of house form and architectural expression.
Read more about Wunderkammer, dwelling within a collectionMay 2015
In her grand english townhouse, Jane Darwell found a pigeon timer and “A Book of Dovecotes” by A.O.Cooke. These heirlooms of her grandmother created a fantastic dreamworld in her mind, a forgotten world, in which pigeon breeding has been existing for thousands of years and is still remaining active in pigeon racing events today.
Read more about A House of Dovecotes - Mariel Kaiser Crompton
May 2015
I heard about that place from a friend, a place from which one apparently leaves happier and more beautiful. She gave me a business card, written in an old font with only a phone number, no name, nor address. Today nobody would make their business cards look like this anymore. Everything about it seemed to come from an old forgotten time. Yet it made me curious.
Read more about A walk through the hat factory - Janina ErnstApril 2015
I am no longer sitting in the living room. I am in a place I have been, but never tread.
Read more about It Had Something to do With the Telling of TimeMarch 2015
Sometimes, when encountering a piece of architecture, we recognize it, not because we have seen it before but because it suits us, personally.
Read more about Memory of a futureFebruary 2015
1.
The symposium Against the Grain[1], organized by Bureau Europa in collaboration with the faculty of architecture at the RWTH Aachen, opened a space for the reassessment of a crucial question: “Is narrative architecture still relevant to the current condition?”[2]
Read more about the ornate function, or poetic purposeFebruary 2015
The long corridor with all the doors. The floor was slippery. You could slide a long way. North and south. The afternoon sun and the leaning tower. The evening sun and the treetops. Behind every door another home. Another bed, another closet, another desk. But yet the same every time. My home is red, your home is blue, but together we paint our home yellow.
Read more about RetrospectFebruary 2015
Trees crowned yellow and red
The air bright with damp leaves
A dry pond, with water all around
Read more about MarkuskyrkanFebruary 2015
We watch the school parade from the balcony.
Even in broad daylight, kids march holding broomsticks crowned by colourful paper lamps. We’ve seen these lamps lit at night, and heard the oldest boys raising havoc since dawn.
Read more about NuquiJanuary 2015
Recently, the renovation of Alvar Aalto's libraryin Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia) has been completed. When I visited the building in 1998, it was in serious state of decay. Below, my impressions of that encounter in words and photos.
Read more about Viipuri library, Alvar Aalto
January 2015
5 years ago
my life weighed 26 kilograms
and fit the 50 x 34 x 81 centimeters of a suitcase
Read more about measureNovember 2014
At some point, the strongest figures simply start mutating in front of the careful observer, becoming each other, mindless of where they stand.
Read more about trinityOctober 2014
The city is a field of narratives. Like in a narrative, the city exists through movement; the unfolding of events. Related ephemeral themes as transience and temporality are not properly captured by the formalistic and visual preoccupation of our profession (Havik, 2012). Therefore it is relevant to research the dynamic qualities of the narrative in relation to the intrinsic dynamics of urban life.
Read more about Mare, by Laurien KorstOctober 2014
between land and water
between dancing and falling
between dream and thought
between now and later and then
September 2014
ometimes you come across a story that is deceiving and confusing, but does it in a convincing and attractive way. „S.” is such a book.
September 2014
the (slimy) skin of the eyes
grows thicker
with time
scar tissue
Read more about berlinSeptember 2014
The classics are the books that come down to us bearing the traces of readings previous to ours, and bringing in their wake the traces they themselves have left on the culture or cultures they have passed through.
Read more about Why Read the Classics?
July 2014
hidden in the forest
made or found
the space of filtered light
the rhythmic sound of hammers
Read more about chapel for natureJune 2014
(Nothing but) Flowers...
- the Talking Heads
Bizarre is to lose shape.
For reasons irrelevant, form sometimes (simply) disappears.
Not that I don't recall or mind the differences that exist between places; no!
Read more about etherJune 2014
this city breathes. its alleys open to hidden squares, the sharpened sunlit houses, a water surface, a passage, then, enclosed again. light penetrates in courtyards and casts moving water patterns on a wall. half open doors invite me in and from a corridor a window leads to water.
Read more about this city breathesMay 2014
behind that rusty door, small steps lead to an open space where light enters through broken windows full of dust.
Read more about flour factoryApril 2014
Sometimes, I wander through these houses, hide from heath between their thick walls, sit barefoot at their verandas and let time disappear. Generations of characters pass by; one comes to sit next to me and tells a life-story, another is only noticeable in the movements of banana leaves and a hint of melancholy.
Read more about the house of fictile time - Gabriel García MárquezApril 2014
The heat of the sun is nearly audible. My shadow disappeared.
Read more about Worshipping colourMarch 2017
For every new beginning something has to end
A tree sheds its dead leaves,
becoming nutrition for new life.
March 2014
behind the blueish/green scaffolding screen
an exchange unfolds
within a variation on a theme
Read more about dialects of grey*February 2014
Their first work was white, mostly; a series of small apartment buildings crowned by raw ceramic roof-tiles and grey crushed granite chips, plastered under the window sills as accents for the facades (rendered with a rugged, extremely abrasive finishing known as “pearl-ite”).
Read more about blissFebruary 2014
She stood on the threshold of a discovery. The concrete floor of her house was littered with A2-sized tissue paper, 62 times the same drawing, but different, the colours blurring into each other in water.
Read more about Reading the city in coloursJanuary 2014
Jane Anderson wrote a poem about her impressions of the Writingplace conference. She presented her paper "Fabrication of the Story Museum" with Colin Priest in the Rescription Session, November 26.
Read more about Delft. impressions of a gatheringJanuary 2014
after the intensity of the (always partial) end
after anxiety, akin to emptiness
after frustration, after fear
after doubt and hungry, hungry nothingness
comes a sense of stupor
Read more about shutting upNovember 2013
"Hadst thou stayed, I must have fled"
That is what the Vision said.
October 2013
This is not a small house. It is only so because here, the immense presence of the landscape makes the house an intimate place. As Bachelard stated, "intimate space and exterior space keep encouraging each other, as it were, in their growth".
Read more about the immense and the intimateOctober 2013
She builds houses with books, my girl, she cannot yet read but she knows the constructive power of stories.
Read more about House of BooksOctober 2013
Following our monthly topic, a recommendation; a literary triptych, to be enjoyed and learned from, on the topic of the house. Read together, as a single, big book, these three approaches provide a beautifully complex vision of the house.
Read more about one and three houses
September 2013
"What shall we do, with all this useless beauty..."
- Elvis Costello
Read more about small and perfect housesAugust 2013
the buildings act as frameworks
to keep commercial signs upright
they become invisible
Read more about the poetic alphabetAugust 2013
it climbs, this light, it sings
as if I follow, sitting in a train
the rhythm of passing ditches,
Read more about rhythmAugust 2013
because the house was here, forever
somebody said they’d built it
July 2013
“Think of (architecture) not as a set of forms but – and this is not to diminish architecture’s engagement with the world, or its status as a material practice – rather as a professional conference. It has a large and fluid constituency of professionals joined by interested outside visitors, such as artists, philosophers, and scientists.
Read more about ConferenceJuly 2013
F: We are old.
H: What are you saying?
F: We are old. After all we have been through, we are still here. But why? Why are we here? Nobody is listening.
May 2013
he myself
„If freedom you defend, honor or restrict, within yourself you shall find“
Read more about he myselfJune 2013
They laugh, talk, drink, smoke, looking at the slowly darkening sky over Tallinn at midnight. Young architects, graduated today, looking at the city in which they will operate: intervening, restoring, inventing, revealing old structures and new potential.
Read more about on the roofMay 2013
someone has been here
a note on his desk
he has just left
us in reflection
plants as silent bodies
slender, round
they saw it all
hortus botanicus Lisboa
May 2013
into the depth of waters
into the depth of times
in ancient times they went here
under this ceiling
bathing in the dimmed light
Arab Baths, Girona.
photo kh 2012
May 2013
As some of the smartest allegories known to man, a gorgeous three legged description of power comes from the East.
Read more about reflection: kaleidoscopeMay 2013
...I want to be part of this world. When I woke up, I heard how the city started to pulverize the day between her centuries-old rotten teeth. At several places in the neighborhood, holes were being drilled. Neighbors screamed at each other through the open windows. In the writings on the wall of the Palazzo across my bedroom I read that no smile can be deciphered. ... I want
Read more about Genova: city as mirrorMay 2013
(In)visibility can be taken onby many outlooks, but as Portuguese architects, intending to encapsulate architecture and literature, we eventually linked our José Saramago and the living experience in a particular space, though invisible, but certainly not blank.
Read more about (in)visible: Blindness or an essay on the (innocent) eye….April 2013
Instead of starting with a blank page, why not start with page full of words and black out all the words you don’t need? Poet Austin Kleon creates edgy poetry with a newspaper and a permanent marker.
Read more about Newspaper + blackout = poetry
April 2013
Tree of Codesis an exceptional book. The pages are full of holes, with occasional words here and there, fragmented and scattered.
Read more about Story made of gaps
April 2013
Arriving in the Netherlands by train from Belgium on a foggy Wednesday morning. The mist a veil over the flat landscape, covering villages, farms and churches in a whitewash , showing silhouettes rather than colors and details.
Read more about on the moveApril 2013
Three older Roma men are sitting on a fountain wall in a small, north Bohemian city. The sun is not shining. Innocent picture it may seem. However.
Read more about INVISIBLE SOCIETY
March 2013
Call me old-fashioned, if you will, but I still yearn for the slow and patient exchange of experience that comes from listening to those who've gathered understanding with time, on the way.
Read more about (in)visible: revelation
March 2013
let’s us be silent
no more words wasted
March 2013
The asphalt is perfect, a bit of sand here and there.
In the front yard only mud, in the backyard as well. The new houses are standing there a bit awkwardly, side by side. The bricks are clean, tight and tidy.
Read more about the (in)visible houseMarch 2013
The architectural craft of pasta making.
First, the raw material is carefully piled up to form a small white mountain.
Read more about (in)visible: tasteMarch 2013
Hiding in the shadows of sheltered arcades, I am present yet invisible. I am hiding in in the sound of heels on polished floors, in the smells of perfume shops behind the doors, in the movement and chattering of schoolchildren passing.
Read more about Portico, BolognaMarch 2013
Ik neem het vandaag op voor alle onzichtbare gebouwen, de gebouwen die niet genoteerd staan in onze catalogus van het netvlies, de gebouwen die over het hoofd worden gezien, de gebouwen waar het stof van de onverschilligheid overheen ligt.
Read more about Abdelkader Benali: 21 schaamteloze observaties voor een 21e eeuwse Nederlandse architectuurFebruary 2013
The title of this article introduces us to the beautiful thoughts of Christian Bök, a Canadian poet. To write “Eunoia”, he restricted himself by the use of only one vowel for each chapter.
Read more about Eunoia, a literary approach within architectural practiceFeburary 2013
‘Eunoia’ is the shortest word in English to contain all five vowels, and the word quite literally means ‘beautiful thinking’.
Read more about EunoiaFebruary 2013
The street belonged to us, to pirates, cowboys, robin hood, witches and all the other characters I can’t recall. It was the terrain of the samba band, the sound wagons and the drunken harmony.
Read more about Three days...February 2013
walking on ice towards the island
where three men eat silently
soup from a kettle
a table, a window
January 2013
this street is a sudden silence
I’m woken up by a darker morning light
filtered by snow on the roof window
this is street a wider space
January 2013
this street is a universe
i'm woken up by toddlers from a kindergarden
the apple tree it's called
Read more about newyearDecember 2012
there is a special way to turn the key,
use gentle force so you won't slam the door
December 2012
style over style, layer upon layer, these houses seem to feed on time
stones and bricks and wooden beams and boards
clad with tiles and bound with knots of iron
Read more about family, faraway
December 2012
Het water, het riet, het te hoge gras. Onze voeten worden nat, onze broekspijpen ook. De schapen schrikken en hobbelen snel voor ons uit. Witte wolken in het groen.
Read more about Bunker 599November 2012
I live in a house without hallways, in my dreams corridors are always endless, or hidden, or dark and without people, with broken tiles, old doors and age-old porcelain wash basins.
Read more about hallways: BerlageNovember 2012
crouched over a pint of stout
he is haunted by sharp memories of a long lost love
Read more about 76
November 2012
We do not rent, squat or own our house; we guard it until it gets demolished. We inhabit a structure of brick, wood and glass that is in transition.
Read more about TRACESNovember 2012
The city lost its scents of a century ago.
‘Bad’ odours are expelled from the public domain.
The industry has left the city centre and commerce determines now the flavour of the city.
November 2012
And if I would speak to you, my reader, how would I describe that moment, yesterday, when after a conversation about places and atmospheres I encountered it. And recognized, just like before, that moment of speech, when the city addresses me directly.
Read more about SpeechOctober 2012
In Autumn I travel the most;
to visit cities like Fedora, Maurilia, DespinaandTekla,
To walk along The Street of the Crocodiles,
Read more about Autumn in the cityNovember 2012
He met her when he was 16. Love at first sight, no, it was not. The first meeting went rather stiff. It was autumn, the streets were covered with orange and yellow colored leaves.
Read more about Puppy loveOctober 2012
serendipity had it, we found a water tower
in the prettiest of cities
and all that I saw there, I am
Read more about Dutch city: U
October 2012
for S.
oh, this silence, overwhelming
for sound, banshee footsteps, forlorn on the dimmest of streets
(running nowhere)
September 2018
While riding my bike through the fields between Rotterdam and Delft, I often stop at places where nobody is around. On a bench I explore the scenery.
Read more about Dutch landscape: Midden-delflandSeptember 2012
before my travel departures I take shelter in the summerhouse of Bjart, an independent shepherd who lives in the land of settlers. he explains to me the hard conditions under which he has to tend his sheep. fall, winter, spring or summer, at 64 degrees north you need to be prepared for climatic conditions, you might need a shelter.
Read more about shelter; Brekkukot
September 2012
Limitless, bound only by the turbulence of the northern sky (so romantic), I dwell among giants, and the controlled nature of the lowlands, in permanent discovery.
Read more about Dutch landscape: limitless, boundSeptember 2012
I have been living in Delft for two years already, but I always seemed to be too busy to visit Delftse Hout. It took a moving and a new, Korean house mate, to lead me there.
Read more about Dutch Landscape: An amateur bike rideAugust 2012
Nicoleta looks worried when a large group of people enters the domain where she and her family have just moved, after their old house became inhabitable. They would like this process to be over as soon as possible, they look forward to the moment when the house is theirs to use. They have collected precious things and brought them to their new place.
Read more about shelter: Arhipera Romania IIAugust 2012
exhausted by all that is human
I am sheltered
by the depth in your eyes
Read more about shelter: minimal prayerAugust 2012
We arrive at the very edge of the village, next to the railway, where the wind has free spell along the new house that seems still alien to this place. Here, we meet Olguta, a woman with a beautiful face marked by a hard life, and Mitiça, her husband.
Read more about shelter: Arhipera RomaniaAugust 2012
The holy smell of my grandparents' village after the rain
the wrinkled saints, with their faces scared by sun and labour
the voices of the sacred animals, the humble livestock ...
Read more about pilgrimage: Planiteron*August 2012
Refugio
bell towers have been silenced
stone piles flattened out
leaving an empty network behind
Read more about pilgrimage: refugioJuly 2012
way and further
way, he is called, and sometimes further
his signs appear in absence
when steps touch rhythms of earlier lives
she stops and waits. were they to meet here?
July 2012
I heard of places where the light reigns,
where the darkness cannot close a book.
I heard of places where darkness prevails,
only the stairs bring light.
July 2012
While the weaker fear and the poor (at heart) fight to keep the city barren
nature insists, quixotic, on treasuring this jewel
Behind blue tiles, rugged masonry basks in time ...
Read more about piligrimage: ruins
July 2012
Speed and progress.
Technology to help humanity. Improve, ease, cure.
Order, based upon mechanics that will shape our future.
A new ideal. A new utopia.
Read more about Landscape: Le corbusier's dream.July 2012
The following poem was written in summer 2011, after a tour along the Scottish coasts, mountains (bens), lakes (lochs) and winding roads. In these landscapes one senses mythical power, age and wisdom.
Read more about landscape/pilgrimage: the ScotswomenJune 2012
The stone lady receives me violent. Lovely.
She winks at me, biting her lip, then slaps my face - the cold Mistral. Yes, this is my pilgrimage, one that starts in the world, at its roughest, and always ends in my gut.
Read more about pilgrimage: wildernessJune 2012
High school ends. 800 km journey to the north. A station wagon packed with me and all my belongings plus two proud yet melancholic parents. Station wagon empties and there I am, facing what I thought of as absolute freedom in the tender age of 18.
Read more about MovingJune 2012
Take off. A turn from Amsterdam. Hanging tilted in the sky I see my coast below. The long stretch of beach along the North sea, the strip of dunes before the land gets organized.
Read more about landscape: Northern coastsMarch 2012
I live here.
The world is flat and straight, and there are no flies. Seasons change, and sometimes bring the miracle of snow.
Read more about landscape: mountainsMay 2012
From the beginning of time, this building has been assumed as a representation of the world - its interior keeping the most complete repertoire of contradiction known to man.
Read more about imaginary building: 0.3
The end of the village, the start of your realm.
The darkest of hours, the shadow of the elm.
The space and the time, the cry of the owl.
The tent of the shaman, the nest of the soul.
Read more about nest: the Shaman's hutMarch 2012
First she brought a toothbrush. Like a twig from another tree, she brought.
Next thing I knew, the drawers of my cupboard were full of her underwear, shower knobs drying slips and my t-shirts squeezed beneath hers.
Read more about nest: all of this and nothing
Je cueillis un nid dans Ie squelette du lierre
Un nid doux de mousse champetre et herbe de songe.
Memory...?
There is one thing that has troubled me for some years now. A feeling that keeps me awake, let's me doubt myself.
I cannot be sure, is it real or not?
March 2012
My brother and me have quite a few things in common, but I think one of the most striking ones is our shared appreciation of my mother's tolerance towards our destroying the living room furniture.
Read more about memory: the raft and the slideMarch 2012
I hardly remember when they took the crib away. They simply said I was big enough to sleep on a bed, and the next thing I knew was that they brought in all these boards and started assembling my very first.
Read more about memory: contentionMarch 2012
"Writing the Modern City. Literature, architecture, modernity", edited by Sarah Edward and Jonathan Charley, Routledge 2012.
Read more about just spotted...March 2012
Our tents stood at the edge of a cornfield. It must have been before summer, because the crops were not very high. It was early in the morning when I opened the tent, which I shared with my little sister.
Read more about memory: art
February 2012
The light barely comes into the carcass of the old construction site. This time of the year the vines cover the façade, perfectly substituting the high tech sunshades that were installed here 20 years ago. All this high tech technology to make panels that follow the sun, shade, and produce energy at the same time
Read more about food utopia/ food dystopiaA place to write, or to write about? Or a place to write about other places?
This virtual writing place is a strange one - accessible from everywhere, still undefined, immaterial, without a clear shape or size. It is unlike any other writing place I used before.
February 2012
Part of anexhibition and selected for a conference in Prague, Mark Proosten and myself wrote the essay "Space is only words". It is an essay based on both our graduation projects for our Master degree in architecture.
Read more about Space is only Words...February 2012
It is impossible to decipher it, basically because there is no single number that can round this building.
Its construction consists, since the beginning and all the time, of an endless addition of partial solutions to specific problems. Therefore there is no way to compare it to anything else.
Read more about imaginary building: 0.2February 2012
In no particular place (of no particular kind either – preferably, though, any prosaic and ordinary setting is best), this shape suddenly appears, sometimes.
Read more about imaginary building: 0.1February 2012
ations. That's the place. No, wait. I mean, I have never thought about it before, but if I could choose my three favourite writing “places”, then it would be my lap, agony and stations.
Read more about My favourite writing place
The most recent group in the msc2 City&Literature series has just presented their results. This term, the course was given by Hans Teerds and Klaske Havik, and focused on the reading of landscape as a public realm.
Read more about Readings on the Public Realm - Landscape
December 2011
that is the strange part
that it is nowhere black
and nowhere really white
it is just how the light falls
December 2011
Architects are trained to draw, to express themselves through images, models, pictures.
Writers are trained to express themselves through language.
But we have two hemispheres on our brains that work so well together when we give them the chance. So why not try?
Read more about Image to Text to ImageDecember 2011
The course City&Literature, taught since 2006 at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft, offers ways to use writing as a creative and critical tool to approach architectural and urban questions. The use of literary exercises allows heightening students’ perceptual receptivity and awareness of spatial experience, while the continuous exchange between the different modes of operating provides new means for site research and design.
December 2011
Writingplace is a platform aiming to explore alternative ways of looking at architecture, urban places and landscapes by the means of literary writing. Initiated as spin-off of the city & literature course at the TU Delft, writingplace facilitates communication between writing initiatives at school of architecture, as well as between practicing architects, writers and researchers who wish to explore the connections between these fields.
Read more about Writing Place TU Delft
