Tag Archive for: architecture and literature

Stories to inhabit

Literary Intersections

Matteo Pericoli
IL GRANDE MUSEO VIVENTE DELL’IMMAGINAZIONE
Guida all’esplorazione dell’architettura letteraria
pp. 166, € 25, il Saggiatore, Milan 2022

by Luigi Marfè

“If the architecture of a novel were a building,” asks Matteo Pericoli in The Great Living Museum of the Imagination, “what shape would it take?” After Finestre su New York (il Saggiatore, 2019) and Finestre sull’altrove (il Saggiatore, 2021), in this new book the author questions, through the exploration of a series of spatial metaphors, the visible forms of narrative creativity: that “clear impression,” as we read, “of feeling immersed in a kind of construction that has its own functioning and structure.” After all, literary theories have often used architectural imagery to describe compositional processes, from the method of loci of classical rhetoric to the constructive functions of formalism. “The house of fiction has many windows, but only two or three doors,” James Wood wrote more recently in How Fiction Works (2008). An architect, writer and illustrator, Pericoli is convinced that metaphors like this are not just abstract formulations, but on the contrary capture deep elements of the cognitive processes by which the mind imagines narrative universes. Each story, in his view, can be understood as a kind of space to be explored: “there are no stories that cannot be inhabited and inspected from within.”

Il grande museo vivente dell'immaginazioneThe Great Living Museum of the Imagination is designed as a walk-through, a visit to an ideal museum about the creativity of architects and writers. “This is not just another book. It is a building,” the author writes: instead of different parts there are floors, instead of chapters as many rooms. Enriched with images, maps and photographs, the book is an iconotext, aiming to re-accustom the reader’s gaze to the observation of physical and mental spaces. Pericoli reflects on the relationship between narrative composition and architectural design, gives a visual reading of some narrative classics, and offers exercises in narrative creativity. Like the imagination of writers, the imagination of architects, he seems to suggest, does not follow objective rules, but is the result of subjective perceptions and intuitions. If there are “stories-that-are-spaces,” there are also “spaces-that-are-stories,” and orienting oneself in the world means trying to turn its pages: walking through a city, “we intuitively read paths, we are attracted by sudden, wide empty spaces, or by the light streaming in from the ceiling, or by a huge window.” The legibility of space is what allows the architect to give it form, composing the narrative surface on which to exercise his design: “The envelope of space is nothing more than the set of all those words, paragraphs and chapters, expressed in the language of architecture and used to articulate ideas, concepts, stories and aspirations.”

Every architect “tells a story.” Unlike those of writers, however, it is not configured as a “concatenation of events,” but of “spaces”: it is therefore an “architectural plot,” a “spatial narrative.” If architects have always fed on the imagery of writers, on the contrary the latter have sought in architecture a way to give visibility to their own narratives. Reading The Great Living Museum of the Imagination brings to mind Gaston Bachelard’s poetics of space, whereby words could be considered as “little houses” that the writer finds himself inhabiting, exploring, furnishing: “To climb the stairs of the house of the word means, from step to step, to abstract,” Bachelard wrote, “To descend into the cellar, means to dream, to lose oneself in the remote corridors of an uncertain etymology, means to search in words for unobtainable treasures.”

The “literary architectures” outlined by Pericoli concern works by Calvino, Ernaux, Vonnegut, Dürrenmatt, Conrad, Carrère, Saer, Ferrante, Tanizaki, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, and Fenoglio. His book is presented as an exercise in “arch-criticism,” if one can call it that, seeking in each text the visible form that best describes it. Pericoli is convinced that narrative imagination does not feed only on words: “There are in fact other thoughts – let’s call them intuitions – often made up of imagination or visualizations that are neither verbal nor causally produced by the reasoning we do.” Visual metaphors can be a gateway to this different dimension of creativity: “very often these thoughts or associations are triggered by metaphors which, if they work as such, are real engines of imagination and creativity that, literally, transport us elsewhere.”

Luigi Marfè teaches literary criticism and comparative literature at the University of Padua

What structure over there awaits the end?

L’Indice dei libri del mese

review by Francesco Gallo

Matteo Pericoli
Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione
Guida all’esplorazione dell’architettura letteraria
168 pp, 25 €
Il Saggiatore, Milan 2022

January 30, 2023

Who knows where Italo Calvino would have placed a book like this: among the Books That Are Missing To Put Next To Others On The Shelf, or the Novelties Whose Author Or Topic Attract Us? We like to think that the author of If One Winter’s Night a Traveler would have placed The Great Living Museum of the Imagination among the Books That Inspire Sudden, Frantic And Not Clearly Justifiable Curiosity.

More than a book, in fact, it is a guidebook; a Guide to the Exploration of Literary Architecture. There are Maps (Ground Floor, First and Second Floor), a Legend of Spaces (Entrance, Rooms 1 and 2, and Inner Courtyard). And there is a guide, of course: the author himself – speaking in a voice that is not his, but ours (but we will understand this as we read on…). A guide who, instead of escorting us along a series of obligatory steps, as a first thing wants us to feel free; free to go where we please, observe what we please, and, most importantly, imagine what we please. He is quick to reiterate, in fact, that “museum” comes from “mūseóon,” meaning the place sacred to the daughters of Zeus where one could contemplate and imagine in full autonomy.

But what is literary architecture? It is an ongoing discovery. Not only that: an attempt to increase our awareness when we relate to spaces (and the void). More: a series of educational workshops that, over the past twelve years, architect, designer and author Matteo Pericoli has held around the world; from Turin (where it all began) to New York, via Dubai.

Inspired by the discovery of a lexicon common to both architecture and literature – how many times have we heard, about a story endowed with uncertain logical connections, that it “lacks structure,” “wobbles,” or “doesn’t stand up”? -, Pericoli has traversed the history of architecture as an attempt to narrate; at first simple, then increasingly complex.

What is the impulse that unites the first hut – when the basic idea was that of a “roof-over-the-head-so-I-don’t-get-wet” – to the first “house-with-a-window” – an “architectural element that connects what is tangible (the frame itself) with the intangible (the view, the outside) and thus the real with the imaginary, the everyday with the absolute” – if not a narrative impulse, the incipit of a story destined irrevocably to complicate itself?

Alice Munro writes: “A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows.”

By stripping architecture of its least relevant elements – the style, the name of the person who designed a certain project, its historical value – Pericoli shows us the spot where the essential lurks; that which “can neither be touched (the space) nor read (the architecture of a story).” Removing the walls, ceilings, windows, etc., removing the envelope, in short, what is left but a void, the void? And setting aside the words, sentences, punctuation and paragraphs of writing a story, what is left but an essence that “can only be intuited and deduced,” as when we confront the ghostly voice of Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or try to intuit the subject matter of the dialogue between the girl and the American in Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants.

Having delved into these reflections from a theoretical point of view – Room 3 contains an enlightening lecture on creative writing; Room 4 reiterates the importance of reading as a wonder-generating activity -, Pericoli, with his characteristic lucidity and politeness, invites us on a tour of the Great Hall where it is possible to view no less than twelve interpretations of literary architecture. Then, a moment before the bookshop (unfailing: as in any museum), he gives us instructions for making our own literary architecture so as to display it in our own, very personal living museum of the imagination. (And reminds us, too, that in architecture it makes little sense to distinguish between “expert” and “non-expert” people, since we all experience our relationship with space.) The only rule in this game – because there are no games without rules – is to always maintain a literary approach, never a literal one. What are we to do with a model of a lighthouse if what we are actually excited about is the dense web of relationships that governs the behavioral dynamics of the Ramsay family during a famous trip to the Isle of Skye? Why not give it a try, then? In between reflections, we may be able to free ourselves “from the inevitable burden given by preconceptions and preclusions due to the judgments and interpretations of others,” and discover something new about the mysterious relationship between architecture and literature. And, why not, about ourselves.

https://www.lindiceonline.com/letture/matteo-pericoli-il-grande-museo-vivente-dellimmaginazione/

Paper Castles | A guide to literary architecture in order to explore books (and oneself) in an innovative way

by Andrea Fioravanti

For eleven years Matteo Pericoli has been teaching students around the world how to analyze the narrative structure of a story and creatively and imaginatively transform it into a building. Out of this experience came “The Great Living Museum of the Imagination” (il Saggiatore), itself written as if it were a museum to explore, complete with a map and bookshop

Dickow, Niddam, Porat, Topaz based on a short story by Yonathan Raz Portugali – Hebrew University of Jerusalem

For Ennio Flaiano, the great books are not the ones we browse carelessly, consume out of envy or emulation, finish in haste, in anger, to keep up with the literary fashion of the moment; they are the ones we read so many times that we inhabit them, feeling them on us like certain corners of our house. We keep them on the bedside table, in our purse or on a precise shelf in the bookstore to take refuge when we need them most. To seek answers to questions that life distractedly poses to us. Some books are shaped like a tent, some like a penthouse, some like a house on a hill.

However, it took the multifaceted nature of an architect, illustrator, teacher and writer to discover how to analyze the architecture of a story and transform it with creativity and imagination into a building. For eleven years Matteo Pericoli has been guiding students all over the world (the United States, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates) in a game that has now become a surprising experiment where there are no mistakes, because there is no dogma to follow: the Laboratory of Literary Architecture. This multi-year work has become a book: “The Great Living Museum of the Imagination” (il Saggiatore), written in turn as if it were a museum to explore, complete with a map and bookshop.

n this generous guide that is attentive to the reader’s pace, Pericoli reveals the secrets to opening up to the mysterious but continuous link between fantasy and construction. And so Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness becomes a soaring inverted pyramid whose apex lies dozens of feet underground; Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale is transformed into two buildings that support and repel each other. And so on it goes, building. This cultural construction site does not end with the book, but expands into a constantly updated bilingual site.

“Eleven years ago a flame was lit in me, igniting a fuse whose effects I had not foreseen. I had just returned from the United States, and when I was offered a workshop at the Scuola Holden, at the time a small space on Via Dante in Turin, I decided to delve into a concept that had been rattling around in my head. Why is it that a story is said to have structure, to have a foundation, or to “not stand”? Yet I realized that in talking with students about narrative structures, words were not enough. There was an amount of information that was missing. So I asked them, ‘Why don’t you show me using cardboard, scissors and glue?’ This trivial question led me to a surprising discovery.”

Which discovery?
We all have a giant underground reservoir of unexplored knowledge. A cauldron of creative energy given by reading that we often fail to access because if we go to search for it with words we only dig up the same concepts that we had worked out in the past by copying other people’s thoughts. Instead of continuing to use words to explain something that was made of words, we try to give tangible form to our thoughts about the book. By doing so, I have noticed that knowledge increases tenfold. And it applies to everyone. From the high school students who take my classes to those who have not read as many books or are not familiar with architecture. This phenomenon is repeated at every workshop.

Let’s pause for a moment at the entrance of this museum-book in which you invite the reader to leave in the wardrobe the cumbersome baggage that prevents a better understanding of the links between stories and architecture. What are the most difficult obstacles to leave behind?
For example, thinking that the relationship between architecture and literature is an insurmountable intellectual endeavor; not feeling up to it and necessarily proving that you are intelligent and prepared before reading a book. But above all, skepticism; the same skepticism I encounter at the beginning when I propose this game. At the first workshop meeting I see some dismayed, terrified faces. Then on the second and third day I am overwhelmed by the crazy enthusiasm of those who understand how good it feels to be on the other side.

On the other side with respect to what?
With respect to preconceptions. Beyond our prior knowledge about style, narrative, the labels we give to books. Stories are not punctual roads to be traveled based on directions given by others, but buildings to be explored freely, immersing ourselves in a literary space. Obviously this space is constructed by someone else, the writer, but in the end the constructions are almost entirely done by us, in our own minds. The hope is that once the museum-book begins the reader will say, you know what? I’m going to leave these bulky bags there and come out lighter than when I went in.

So let’s go in light and give an example of an architectural construction inspired by a narrative structure.
During a workshop, I was struck by the different ways in which Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” can be viewed. For the architects, the love story between the two characters was square, like a parallelepiped, while for the high school kids it was cylindrical, perhaps more idealized. These responses fill your mind and body with a positive feeling, because with a text they would not have been able to deepen the relationship between the two main characters like that. The same happened with Amy Hempel’s extraordinary short story entitled “The Harvest.” In eleven years of the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, no two buildings ever looked alike. The point is that our thoughts have a pre-verbalized shape and feeling, different for everyone, which we often ignore, jumping immediately to the next step to feed our inner monologue. The workshop enhances what the written words deflate. There are continuous results because this process is something extremely natural that only comes out if we relax.

Could this innovative approach be used in schools to bring young people, as well as older people, closer to reading?
Certainly. Realizing that reading is similar to exploring a place whose ultimate shape is embedded in our synapses might be a drive to approach stories in a different way. That is, not trying to replicate what others have previously said or thought about that book. Because a work has been presented to us as beautiful, ugly, simple or complex, we should not look for a feeling in the text that others have already found. We know much more than we think we know. By going back to the source of ideas that have weight and form, we can all find our own spaces, building, deconstructing, tearing down and starting over. And mistakes no longer exist; there are no teachers and no students.

In the book you delve into two important concepts that literature and architecture share: emptiness and context.
Architecture is the constant companion of our entire existence. We spend our lives crossing, passing through buildings and spaces one after another. To understand them we talk about styles and forms, but we often neglect the most powerful effect of architecture: what is not there. Our rooms are surrounded by walls, but we live and work within the one space that has not been built. And so also in stories we give so much importance to pages, paragraphs, sentences and words, neglecting how important the space within a story is. An ineffable element that we have to reconstruct in our minds. And how we do that necessarily depends on the context. Not only the one within which the book or building escapes, but also my context: everything I have learned, heard, believed so far; my expectations and ideas that make me always approach the story or space differently according to my existential condition at that moment. Focusing on different details and spaces each time.

You talked about how much architecture is in literature, but how much literature is in architecture?
Architecture is impregnated with narrative. Each compositional choice made by whoever designed the spaces we live in (from the sequence of volumes to their connections, from what is revealed to what is concealed, from the impact of light to the mystery of darkness, and so on) is actually a narrative choice, sometimes made consciously and sometimes not. Architecture then determines the narrative of our day. Think of the moment when you cross the threshold and leave your house in the morning: in your head you think something new is beginning but that something actually does not exist because outside the door nothing has begun and nothing has ended, everything has always existed. Architecture is our device for framing our daily narrative: opening the window to change the air in the morning, leaving the house, returning home, going up the stairs, going down the stairs. This interaction with architecture is unconscious but deeply narrative and determines how we frame the narrative of our lives. Every movement we make is a reading of space, and without knowing it we are already able to understand the concatenation of narratives of the architecture around us. Why do we exit a building and go right instead of left?

And by instinctively knowing architectural spaces are we able to analyze narrative structures?
Yes, everyone in their own way gives meaning to different elements by privileging one over the other. The door has a clear narrative potential, but for someone the height of a ceiling may be important. A window put in the right place may be a revelation for someone. But if you convey that to another narrative need, it doesn’t work at all. Imagine the first time someone with a hammer or sledgehammer knocked down a piece of wall in a building of any kind, primordial or otherwise, and saw the world outside without being able to walk through it. Who knows, maybe every architectural element has its literary counterpart, after all, that’s how stories are born.

Castelli di carta | Guida all’architettura letteraria per esplorare in modo innovativo i libri (e sé stessi)

by Andrea Fioravanti, published on Linkiesta on November 26, 2022:
https://www.linkiesta.it/2022/11/museo-vivente-immaginazione-pericoli-saggiatore/