Writing atmospheres

Havik, Klaske

doi:10.4324/9781315613154-17

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The workshop prompted the students to engage diverse literary techniques in order to imagine characters, events, and conditions, "as real situations" that could transform the site. Based on the fascinating variety of literary techniques for architecture, explored in the work Urban Literacy: Reading and Writing Architecture (2014) by architecture scholar Klaske Havik, 28 two main lines of investigation were explored in the course through writing. On the one hand, imagination was engaged in order for the students to reinvent ways to describe common qualities and experiences of the place, and thus see it anew.…”

Section: Living Throughmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining and Re-imagining Place: Cultivating Spatial Imagination in Architectural Education

Sioli,

Havik,

Floet

2021

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For pressing and complex spatial or social urban agendas, understanding and interpreting place has always been an important issue. In-depth and close explorative reading of a site—in which drawing, modeling and writing (the basic tools of architecture) become instruments to open up new perspectives—is vital for imagining site-specific architectural possibilities. We thus see creative imagination, related to and emerging from place, as a crucial source of innovation. As educators, therefore, we need to examine how to guide students explore their imaginative faculties. Our pedagogi-cal approach is founded upon the philosophical thought of phenomenology, theory on place, findings from neurosci-ence, and examination of architectural precedents. Based on these underpinnings we developed a course that focused on enhancing students’ spatial imagination and challenged them to think how the tools of architectural analysis and design can offer new imaginative ways to approach the local, social and historical aspects of a place. The paper illustrates how this framework is brought into architectural education by engaging the example of “Methods of Analysis and Imagination,” a master level elective course we taught in 2019. It presents the course’s overarching structure, as it unfolded over three intensive workshops on drawing, modeling and writing respectively. Investigating a selected site—through readings, conversations, exercises, hands-on and in situ assignments—the three workshops explored the way imagination can help us look at a place, and discover new and unique spatial or architectural relationships lurking in the banal and the ordinary. Through selected students’ work the paper concludes situating the course in an educational context that cares to expand spatial and architectural imagination, trusting imagination to be the productive and valuable answer to the many critical contemporary conditions we face as architects.

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Section: Living Throughmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining and Re-imagining Place: Cultivating Spatial Imagination in Architectural Education

Sioli,

Havik,

Floet

2021

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“…Delft University of Technology experiences of space and spatial practices of the body are often much more accurately described than in professional writings on architecture, whether in the form of architectural history, criticism or design theory. 7 Looking at the selected Poe stories closer, it is not hard to notice that the lived experience of place is indeed prevalent. The role of the body is described in relation to this lived experience.…”

Section: Angeliki Siolimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Detective Stories Studio: The Function of Fiction in Shaping Architectural Education

Sioli¹

2020

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Presenting the example of the “Detective-Stories Design Studio” as a case study for a master-level course, this paper explores the role of literature and fiction in architectural education. Through selected Edgar Allan Poe short stories, the paper unpacks three distinct approaches that the studio employed in incorporating literature for the exploration of contemporary design issues. Touching on the ongoing conversation on atmosphere and space the first approach introduces literature as an exploration of a place’s lived experience. It examines fiction’s potential to communication spatial qualities and moods, allowing us to understand how these intangible elements influence our perception and appropriation of a given environment. Based on these characteristics the design work focuses on the creation of a device that attunes students with the specific atmosphere that Poe’s short story “The Masque of Red Death” uniquely captures. The second approach touches on literature’s imaginative power to suggest unexpected and many times overlooked uses of space. Based on “The Purloined Letter,” the design-work heavily draws from the spatial investigative techniques analyzed in the short story to proceed with an unconventional site analysis. The third methodology emerges from literature’s capacity to point towards paramount sociological conditions of space, in a way that allows us to reconsider and re-evaluate our own everyday reality. Poe’s “Black Cat” tangibly confronts the issue of domestic violence in American society and the design assignment addresses this issue. The paper concludes with a contextualization of the suggested methodological approach in relation to the renewed architectural interest in literature, as manifested the last ten years through interdisciplinary conferences and publications both in North America and Europe. The paper places “The Detective-Stories Studio” in this contemporary pedagogical and research context and evaluates its significance and uniqueness in the ongoing conversation.

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Writing atmospheres

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Imagining and Re-imagining Place: Cultivating Spatial Imagination in Architectural Education

Imagining and Re-imagining Place: Cultivating Spatial Imagination in Architectural Education

The Detective Stories Studio: The Function of Fiction in Shaping Architectural Education

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