The Paris of L’Ivre De Pierres, Narrative Architecture between Words and Drawing

Abstract

An editorial experiment pursued by Jean-Paul Jungmann between 1977 and 1983, L’Ivre de Pierres provides a series of imaginary visions, mostly of an imaginary Paris, conceived through architectural narrations that were articulated in the pages of a book. This article examines L’Ivre de Pierres’ unconventional approach to figurative writing, as an example of the possibilities of exploring architecture through narrative means, constructing urban narratives through architectural design, and developing architectural criticism through both. L’Ivre de Pierres did not renounce the project in favour of discourse, but employed architectural devices to elaborate a ‘concrete utopia’ instead: one made of potentially realizable projects which, however, were conceived to exist only as (real) fictions in the pages of a book. Firmly rooted in Jungmann’s previous experience with the magazine Utopie, with which it somehow plays a game of mirrors, L’Ivre de Pierres is also linked to the tradition of paper architecture that historically used fiction to produce architectural discourses, criticism, or to think architectural designs. This article researches on the narrative methods and modes – it examines the iconography, the book format, the content and types of texts – used in L’Ivre de Pierres as an example of the potential that these both visual and textual alternative realities have for the reading, thinking and writing of urban places.