A Book-Building: The Museum of Literary Architecture

“What if these kinds of spaces, which we will call ‘literary architecture’, were narrative structures turned into actual architectural structures? Why not take the architecture of a story and turn it into a building?” (M. Pericoli, Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione. Guida all’esplorazione dell’architettura letteraria, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2022, p. 16)

On the threshold

Upon entering the Great Living Museum of the Imagination, we feel the distinct impression that someone is taking us by the hand and leading us along a path with a sure hand, yet able – at the same time – to respect our time (our pace), to let us move freely without, however, ever losing sight of us. The voice that guides us is that of Matteo Pericoli, an architect, illustrator and author who succeeds, in this book-museum, in cultivating a fertile middle ground, that of Literary Architecture, a dimension that cannot be ascribed to a new form of architecture or literature. The book, in fact, has sprouted from the more than decade-long experience of The Laboratory of Literary Architecture (lablitarch.com), an experience of true unearthing of a still unexplored territory. Upon scrolling down the first page we feel a tear, we immediately become readers who, while reading, become visitors to a space, immersed in a construction “that has its own functioning and structure.” Play within play, Matteo Pericoli thus leads us to live a twofold experience: that of readers/visitors exploring a space that houses Literary Architecture and, simultaneously, that of those who can experience firsthand what happens when – thanks to words (written, but, above all, read) – an architectural structure inspired by a novel or a story takes shape.

The Tool Bag

Upon entering the book-building, we can explore the environments that make up an itinerary that gradually introduces the reader/visitor to Literary Architecture. A succession of spaces unravels between the entrance to the Museum and the exit, leading the reader through progressively illuminated and illuminating environments: if in the first section of the text (Ground Floor and First Floor) the author presents the theoretical-structural elements of Literary Architecture, in the second section (Second Floor), on the other hand, a wide selection of literary architectures inspired by well-known or lesser-known novels finds its place (each architecture is accompanied by a short text introducing both the novel in question and the particular interpretative insight that gave rise to that very architecture). We are dealing, then, with a book that provides both the tool bag to use and, later, some examples that the reader can read/watch to approach the middle ground of literary architecture.

The theoretical dimension of the experiment is presented by drawing on the previous (and current) experience of the reader who is constantly urged to question the act of reading, its potential, and what can happen to anyone who reads a short story or a novel not only by visualizing what he or she reads, but by sensing that he or she is situated in a (literary) space that can be translated into formal structures precisely because it itself consists of architectural elements; in fact, Matteo Pericoli argues that literary architecture arises when disciplinary boundaries blur and one begins to perceive architecture as a spatial narrative and, simultaneously, the literary text as the construction of a space:

[…] these thoughts occur when we least expect it and above all when we allow our mind to move freely and silently, without taking anything for granted, without prejudices or any particular goal, and, above all, without fragmentation […] (p.27)

The fragmentation to which the author refers concerns both the jealous claim of disciplinary boundaries and the simultaneous breakdown of the reading experience into specific skills that go to reduce/depower the revolutionary impact that reading a text can provoke in the reader.

Matteo Pericoli thus relies, on the one hand, on the characteristics of the literary text and, on the other hand, on the creative potential of reading; the fruitful encounter between reader and literary text can thus open up the possibility of literary architecture as another dimension, as a bridging reality, constantly suspended between word and image, a reality that allows us to insinuate ourselves “through the written words and feel with your whole body that, on the other side, there is a kind of parallel universe. There is a world that is all yours where the stories and their structures — the architecture of novels and poems and literary texts in general — are not just metaphors or abstract theories, but real constructions, meticulously built, word by word, paragraph by paragraph.”

The game is done

The second section of the Book-Museum — the one devoted to the twelve literary architectures presented in the Great Hall and punctuated by the binary rhythm given by the brief introductions to the novels and the images of the literary architectures prompted by the reading of those texts — allows the reader to directly experience the alienating effect caused by the translation of novels into forms that are articulated in space: Ernaux, Faulkner, Fenoglio, Tanizaki are just a few of the writers summoned. Here the reader experiences what Matteo Pericoli has been arguing from the very beginning of his journey, namely that architecture is a universal experience, one that goes beyond specialized knowledge because we all, from time immemorial, experience space, pass through it, live it, just as we all – though not scholars, literary critics, though not mastering any specific knowledge – are readers who can discover a new dimension of reading.

A single, brief example that may allow us to grasp some of the dynamics outlined above: we find ourselves in the Great Hall and, while strolling, we suddenly come across the structure — one of infinite possibilities — that corresponds to Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees: “Rebellion cannot be measured by yards … Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return”; someone may recall the famous retort of Baron di Rondò to his son Cosimo.
The Rampante, however, enacts his rebellion (“And I shall neve come down again!”) and sets a distance — a few inches, but they are an unbridgeable gap — that seems to be the beating heart of the story.

This is how Matteo Pericoli presents the architecture inspired by the Baron:

“The building’s supporting structure is made of a thick, load-bearing wall, which, as it rises, becomes a void, i.e. a gap separating two identical masses of glass and stone that penetrate each other without ever touching.” (p. 97)

Whether the reader is a loyal friend of the Baron or has unfortunately not yet met him, the literary architecture before him will succeed in making tangible one of the structural aspects of Italo Calvino’s novel and, then, it will be difficult to resist the desire to dive back into Cosimo’s leafy world or to rush to discover it for the first time.

Note: Thanks to Matteo Pericoli for granting and authorizing the use of images from his book.

https://laletteraturaenoi.it/2024/05/24/un-libro-edificio-il-museo-di-architettura-letteraria/

Windows on the World

May 2024

by Matteo Pericoli

I still remember vividly the feeling of bewilderment I felt when, now 20 years ago, I stood in front of my window on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for what would be one of the last times in my life. I had lived in that apartment with my wife for seven years and the time had come to move out. With the boxes now packed, there suddenly stood before me another ‘thing’ that we were almost forgetting to take with us: the window of our bedroom / my studio and, glued to it, the view of a series of courtyards, roofs, chimneys, water towers and, in the background, the tip of Riverside Church that had kept me company for so long.

I thought of removing the window from the wall and taking both it and the view with us. No way. I checked carefully to see if a hypothetical transparent plastic coating could be peeled off the window, which might have miraculously retained the images of both the frame and the view. No way. I then tried to photograph the whole thing, but what I was looking for turned out to be much more elusive than I thought: in fact, the photos seemed to show either the frame or the cityscape beyond the window, not both. The problem could have been my camera, or my hand, or more simply my inexperience with photography.

So I decided to take a large roll of wrapping paper and hastily draw on it the window almost on a 1:1 scale. So it was that, to my enormous surprise, I noticed the large amount of detail that I had missed. “But how is this possible?” I asked myself, ”this is the Manhattan cityscape that I am more familiar with than any other. I’ve been sitting beside this window for seven years, turned to look out an inordinate number of hours, and only now do I notice all these details.” I then decided to explore further, using drawing, the strange interdependent relationship we have with this architectural object-non-object. Often it is a strong bond, almost affection, sometimes there is instead detachment or even annoyance.

I asked a multitude of people to show me their windows, to allow me to draw them, to describe them to me and tell me about the relationship they had with this hole in the wall. I realized that in order to fulfill the irresistible desire I had to tell the story of the city where I was living at the time, New York, I would have to observe it from the most intimate perspective of all: that of those who look at it (actively or passively) from their windows. I have been drawing windows ever since. I have designed hundreds of them. Windows that look out on cities, windows that look out on nature, on the sea, on meadows, on forests.

Windows that show us the present, that look out toward the past, into that very past which, with its concatenations, has brought us to that precise point in time and space. Although the drawings always show the same subject — the tangible (the frame) framing the intangible (the view) — my attention has gradually shifted from the outside to the inside, from what is seen to how and why we see.

Drawing after drawing, the glass has been gradually transforming into a mirror in which, with each glance, we end up seeing reflected ourselves and our thoughts, our desires, our hopes; the past mingling with the present. Of all the construction, constituent and compositional elements in architecture, the window is undoubtedly the one with the greatest narrative potential.