Architect, illustrator and author, in 2010 Matteo Pericoli started his Literary Architecture Workshop, which invites participants to transform short stories and novels into architecture. It is not a matter of imagining or giving shape to the locations and environments that the writing narrates, but rather of understanding the very structure of the story and translating it into a building. A meta-literary exercise in which the author’s narrative construction acquires, in the hands of the reader, concreteness in the form of drawings or models. The book itself, which contains twelve examples referring to as many novels, such as Heart of Darkness (Conrad), The Adversary (Carrère) or The Years of Annie Enraux, developed by Pericoli himself, is presented as an architectural structure, specifically a museum in the Greek sense of the term as a place sacred to the Muses, ideal for inspiration and contemplation. The buildings that arise from the Laboratory are by necessity subjective. For example, in front of Amy Hempel’s short story The Harvest, which twice recounts a car accident in which the writer herself is a victim – though the second story begins with the unsettling words “I omit many things when I tell the truth” – two groups participating in the workshop imagine different buildings, though both as deceptive-looking as the story, with unexpected spaces, columns that do not hold anything up and furniture elements – made of concrete – that are instead the real structures of the building. Surprising in many ways, Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione makes you want to try it yourself, with a beloved short story, drawing paper, colored pencils, cardboard, glue and scissors.
Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione Matteo Pericoli Il Saggiatore, Milan, 2022 166 pages, 25 euros ISBN 978-88-428-3218-8
“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://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/laletteraturaenoi.png2161028Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2024-05-21 10:28:002025-02-21 10:36:31A Book-Building: The Museum of Literary Architecture
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.
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ioArch.png272716Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2024-05-18 16:14:002025-02-18 18:25:08Windows on the World
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/WaPo-3-1.jpg560804Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2023-12-14 11:53:232023-12-19 08:14:43Windows on Elsewhere in the Washington Post
Paris in Our View is a collection of fifty-five poems reflecting Shakespeare and Company’s perspective on the French capital—a perspective formed both by the books on our shelves and by the readers and writers who pass each day through our doors.
The acclaimed Italian illustrator Matteo Pericoli provides the gorgeous line drawings, which depict the window views of poets who, at one time or another, made their homes in Paris. These include the views of Arthur Rimbaud, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Charles Baudelaire, Julio Cortázar, Aimé Césaire, Aja Monet, César Vallejo, Victor Hugo, Natalie Clifford Barney, and Oscar Wilde—as well as those of the Beat Hotel and Shakespeare and Company, whose window onto Notre-Dame cathedral and Hôtel-Dieu is featured on the book’s cover.
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/shakespeare-and-company-paris-header.webp166384Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2023-11-10 17:11:102023-11-10 17:21:30Paris in Our View
The Great Living Museum of the Imagination written by Matteo Pericoli guides us in the exploration of literary architecture
by Mario Gerosa
Every building architecture preserves a story within itself, it tells something that escapes the obvious idea of functionality. Of course, every house, building, palace or castle first and foremost serves the housing needs of those who must inhabit it, and in most cases it also responds to precise typological canons. Finally, it refers back to the proportions associated with the dimensions of man, normed by the drawing of the “uomo leonardesco” as well as by Le Corbusier’s Modulor.
But there are also intangible buildings that constitute a multifaceted separate universe, and there is also an inner voice of architecture, be it literary or built from mortar and bricks, that refers to a narrative, often developed on the basis of the sedimentations and stratifications of emotions felt by the visitors who have been there.
All these concepts have been brought out by Matteo Pericoli, an architect and illustrator, who in 2010 founded the Laboratory of Literary Architecture (www.lablitarch.com), “a multidisciplinary exploration of narrative and space,” an important and authoritative point of reference for studies in this field presented at numerous conferences and workshops around the world.
Pericoli systematized a whole series of thoughts and reasoning related to a transversal view of the art of building in The Great Living Museum of Imagination (Il Saggiatore).
The book is structured as a guided tour inside a macro-architecture composed of many buildings, which define an ideal gigantic complex. As if we were in a physical space, the exposition progresses through a series of spaces in which the reader can feel at ease, recognizing a familiar sequence: the museum of literary architecture conceived on paper by Pericoli comprises three floors, with an entrance hall, five rooms, a great hall, and a courtyard. On the first two floors, the reflection on spaces examines many existing pieces of architecture, from the Pantheon to the Guggenheim Museum, from the Parthenon to Villa Savoye, interweaving and intersecting considerations related to examples of literary architecture. From an increasingly tight and compelling comparison, assonances and affinities emerge between the written and built architecture.
A step toward the beyond
In another chapter, that of the Second Floor, we move into the territory of literary architecture, with individual examples dedicated to the architectural inventions of twelve major authors, from Calvino to Dürrenmatt via Vonnegut. The deeper one delves into the reading, the more the boundaries between the two kinds of architectures blur, the built one, which for convenience, with a misnomer, one may call “real architecture,” and the other, the literary one.
“True architecture” is a curious expression, Pericoli notes. “As if there is one that is ‘not true,’ and therefore ‘false’? ‘fake’? ‘not real’? ‘intangible’? After all, architecture is to construction like writing is to typing, or the act of writing. The architect is not ‘needed’ for building (many can and just do that), just as the writer or writer is not ‘needed’ for composing sentences, words, texts. So there is perhaps the idea —, much shared and perhaps even legitimate — that on the one hand there is ‘literary architecture,’ immaterial, intangible, perhaps simply the result of some mental or intellectual endeavor, and on the other hand there is ‘real architecture,’ that is, the built, tangible, firm, fixed, objective architecture. And that the two are divided, separated. Here, I strongly believe instead that once we surrender to the idea that a story is like a house, a house to explore, to inhabit, from whose windows we see a changed world, which changes, as we change with each new visit and which is therefore something ‘real,’ as real as our experiencing of architecture, of space, of movement, of proportions, the changes of level, the ascents, descents, openings, darkness, clarity, and so on, then we are ready to read how narrative impregnates everything, it is everywhere, and it is a founding component of the architectural space that we read and perceive on a daily basis, just as we store in our minds the functioning of a story or literary text in general. Here we have to beware of the main misunderstanding: not how we perceive and read, and thus imagine, what a story describes to us (its settings, places, landscapes, its characters, how they are dressed, etc.), but how we learn to move within that construction, which is the product of how the story was constructed (according to us and our inclinations) — thus its materials, its syntax, its voice, its grammar, its cultural context, the references on which it rests, and so on.Literary architecture can give us that sense of confidence in discovering with ease, and perhaps pleasure, the narrative of architectural spaces, how they concatenate, how they reveal themselves to us — to us in relation to our inclination and our reading — and not (or not only) the story of how these buildings came to exist.”
All of these concepts emerge in the book, designed as a compelling architectural promenade between different types of buildings. But what are the literary architectures that have most struck Matteo Pericoli’s imagination?
“I have visited a huge number of literary architectures, buildings constructed either after I read the texts myself, and thus ‘designed’ them in my mind, or after readings and designs made by others. The ones that struck me most were perhaps those that concealed insights and ideas whose form could only be expressed in that way, that is, through architecture, and not through the use of words. The beauty of this approach, or method, or vision however one wishes to call it (that of the Laboratory of Literary Architecture), is that once one is on the “other side,” the side beyond words, in the place where the text is a series of architectural forms and spaces, thus wordless, to be manipulated and explored with freedom and ease, one has access to that state of mind, which usually lasts but an instant, in which our ideas have a shape before they have content.
A project by a group of high school students comes to mind. They were working on Ernest Hemingway‘s short story Hills Like White Elephants, and for them the crucial element, the fulcrum around which the story, the text, the protagonists and their reading revolved, was the weight of the decision as to whether or not she will do an intervention, a ‘small operation,’ which the two protagonists fervently discuss without describing in detail. The architecture of this group of kids is a plaza at a lower level of the city, where we are driven to descend (we are attracted by emptiness) and on which hangs, suspended, a huge black cube, the weight of the decision, at such a height and position that it causes a sense of both discomfort and curiosity. The idea of the two protagonists is not present in the project, and already this seemed to me beautiful and strong. But the thing that struck me most, for clarity, strength, elegance, and sophistication of thought, was that the tie-rods that hold that cube in suspension, tie-rods of different lengths from each other because of the off-center and asymmetrical position of the volume in relation to the whole, work (literally work) differently, some are tighter and under greater tension, others less so. Those different tensions represent the various moments of tension in the dialogue between the two protagonists that definitely does not work.“
It is evident in the book that there is always a distinct sense of narrative in literary architecture. One wonders if this narrative dimension is also found in built architecture.
“Just as every story that, from the moment it leaves the pen or the table of the writer and is let go, must necessarily have its own architectural structure, so every piece of architecture is necessarily imbued with narrative. Whether this happens consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant. There are those who write with a strong inclination toward the architectural design of the text they are constructing, and there are those who write instead letting their instincts guide them or move them by who knows what other ‘forces.’ But, in the end, the product is a structure that will have to ‘stand’, either well or badly, in order to be read. Turning the tables, much of the decisions that architects make, whether consciously or unconsciously, can be likened to those that the writer must make: how to meaningfully concatenate spaces? How to reveal the main space? How to use the clarity given by light? How to create surprises or expectations? How to make evident or hide the structure that supports the whole? How to use, if desired, linguistic references related to the past? (And to what past?). What form, and thus voice, to give to the whole?“
It still remains to be understood in which buildings the narrative component is most relevant.
“In all of them,” Pericoli states. “In architecture, the ‘narrative component’ is inextricable from any compositional decision. In the museum-book, on the First Floor, in Room 3, I say, ‘the choices one makes when composing architectural structures are qualitatively very similar to those made by someone who is narrating a story.'”
And then begins this long list of (self-)questions and answers:
“For example: isn’t positing an entrance on the side instead of in the middle a narrative choice? Yes, because by entering the ‘narrative space’ from the side we perceive it differently, the perspective changes. But then is raising or enlarging a window also a narrative choice? Yes, because somehow we change the relationship that exists between inside and outside, as well as the amount of information that can be ‘read.’ And is moving the visitor from a square room to a rectangular one a narrative choice? Sure, because they will perceive either an expansion or contraction of space (depending on the orientation of the rectangle). And is deciding whether or not to set back the front of a building from the street it faces a narrative choice? Well, yes, because it is like making explicit the relationship with which that building (then it depends on what kind of building it is: a house, a church, a bank, a museum, a skyscraper) stands in relation to the context, how and how much you want to highlight this relationship. What about the decision whether or not to incorporate a large tree into the structure of a building? It is a very strong narrative choice; it clearly tells what you believe the relationship between artifact and nature should be. And is the height of a wall dividing two communicating rooms a narrative choice? Yes, because the height will have a direct effect on what you will be able to read or glimpse or imagine about the other space; plus, it is a clear way of telling us whether you intend for the two environments to be perceived as linked or divided. What about setting back an entrance to make room for a porch? You see it on the ground floor in Room 1 with the Pantheon; it’s like retreating or postponing a beginning, a kind of introduction. And are providing soft lighting and deciding whether to do it with direct or indirect light narrative choices? Light, another material among the many narrative devices at an architect’s disposal, projects clarity or can deceive by excess or defect; it is directly related to clarity of exposition. And is the repetition of nearly the same structural elements (such as my repeating ‘it’s a narrative choice’) amidst the progression of a series of varying volumes a narrative choice? Of course, if used carefully it is a kind of architectural anaphora.”
Dedicated to those who can’t give up design and architecture even in summer (and their children): 5 titles to experience the work of the big names in design
With summer and the vacations approaching, five freshly printed titles to pack (even for the little ones) that are beautiful and useful for traveling even through the work of great architects, designers, artists and, lo and behold, even writers. With a suggestion dedicated to those who, perhaps on a sailing boat, will have the opportunity to remember that ours is also a country of coastlines, harbors and – above all – lighthouses.
[…]
3. Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione. Guida all’esplorazione dell’architettura letteraria, by Matteo Pericoli (Il Saggiatore, 25 Euros)
Only an architect-illustrator (and son of art) with a dreamy stroke like Matteo Pericoli could think of turning great novels into buildings complete with entrances, floors, rooms, courtyards and exits. Where to show readers, as they go, -as in a guided tour- visions and architecture, stories and designs, fantasy and construction. From thatched huts to the Parthenon, from stone houses to the Guggenheim in New York, page after page, Matteo Pericoli takes readers on a journey through the works of Calvino and Annie Ernaux, Fenoglio and William Faulkner, Elena Ferrante and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, to talk about them as if they were splendid and mysterious buildings.
Who will like it: bibliophiles, always on the hunt for new insights into authors and novels. And, of course, to those who look at architecture and interior design as disciplines that allow emotions, memories, and words to have their place as well.
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Interni.png2881062Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2023-06-24 13:09:002025-02-21 13:16:255 books on architecture and design to read this summer
With his drawings of Manhattan, Matteo Pericoli won New Yorkers over (and then the rest of the world), then went back to Italy, to Turin, to work on architecture, stories, and their relationship.
by Manuel Orazi
Many in literature have used the metaphor of architecture, especially to shape the structure of a novel; however, very few have done the opposite: imagining architecture as a narrative structure. This is the original interpretation of Matteo Pericoli, a man who, after leaving his profession in architecture, backed into it again.
After graduating from Politecnico di Milano university under Wolfgang Frankl – one of Mario Ridolfi’s historical collaborators – right before his passing, Pericoli moved to New York to work for Peter Eisenman for a brief period and then for Richard Meier. Between 1995 and 2008, the Big Apple was the setting for his metamorphosis from architect to illustrator; he conquered the city that never sleeps, which he drew from the outside first and the inside after (in Manhattan unfurled and Manhattan within).
What if the architecture of a novel were a real building – that is, it had a physical, tangible structure made of more than just words – what shape would it take?
Annie Ernaux, Les années
Paul Goldberger, then critic for The New Yorker, wrote that Pericoli managed to win New Yorkers over because he was the first to gather the entire urban profile of the island in a single roll, to draw Manhattan as if it were a town from his birth region. After many years and many other literary adventures that brought him to work with some of the most renowned international newspapers, Pericoli went back to Italy, but not to Marche, the region where his family is originally from, but to Turin.
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (L’amica geniale)
There, he found the Scuola Holden, where he proposed a completely new way of perceiving literature: “stories need to be experienced mentally before they can be written.” So, are stories landscapes, are they doors? “Not really, a story is not like a road to follow… it’s more like a house. Like the Nobel price Alice Munroe explained, 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. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished.”
So you can even go back again and again, of course, “the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.” The result is a collection of curious drawings, now gathered in a book, The Great Living Museum of the Imagination, which is probably the most ambitious of his books, the crowning achievement of this second Italian life of his. It certainly is the most theoretical of his publications.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Mattatoio 5)
Pericoli’s intellectual candor echoes that of Gianni Rodari and his The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories, published over fifty years ago, the only theoretical text by Rodati, which makes it particularly significant. In the back cover of the 1973 edition, Rodari wrote: “I insist on saying that, although Romanticism surrounded it with mystery and created a sort of cult around it, the creative process is inherent to human nature and therefore it is within everyone’s reach, with everything this entails in terms of happiness to express and play with one’s imagination.”
Similarly, Pericoli encourages everyone to this exercise, trying to unravel some of the big, abstract questions without ever wanting to present himself as a philosopher or a critic, but suggesting practical solutions that are accessible to everyone. And he does so, for instance, by posing the question: what if the architecture of a novel were a real building – that is, it had a physical, tangible structure made of more than just words – what shape would it take?
It’s a question that Pericoli has been trying to answer for more than a decade together with his students at the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, which started at the Scuola Holden and then extended to other universities as well: “Reception creates interpretations that translate into shapes that are completely different depending on the student that conceives them, no two are the same.” The drawn, often bizarre, structures stress a fundamental fact: the process of reading of a text is just as creative as the process of its writing (maybe even more so), “the choices that are made when building architectural structures are very similar in quality to those made by a storyteller…It has the same feeling as a collaboration between two active sources rather than being a monodirectional transmission > reception process.”
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Domus-logo-blu.jpg200600Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2023-05-23 17:16:002025-02-21 13:32:07Architecture as a narrative structure
Architect, illustrator and author, in his new book the author offers a true guide to exploring literary architecture
by Lara Crinò
That the act of narrating can be likened, metaphorically, to that of designing a building, a neighborhood, even a city, is something we all know. We know it from having experienced it, as amateur or professional writers from a very young age: were we not perhaps encouraged, when we are about to put our thoughts on paper, with an expression that comes from architecture itself: “fai la scaletta,” (make a ladder) as if writing were placing rungs to climb higher? We know this, too, from studying it. What are literary theory and semiotics talking about, if not how we “construct,” again a metaphor of sorts, the text?
In his new book The Great Living Museum of the Imagination (il Saggiatore), however, Matteo Pericoli, an architect, designer and author, takes it a step further by offering, as the subtitle suggests, a true Guide to Exploring Literary Architecture.
Stemming from the experience of a workshop with a group of creative writing students from the Scuola Holden in Turin, this essay is a real experiment, starting with the format. Indeed, in the first few pages, the reader is asked to approach the reading as if exploring a museum, complete with a map, moving from a “ground floor,” which serves to introduce the book’s purposes, to a “first floor” and then to a “second floor” in which these purposes are spread out and then applied to a series of literary works. The basic thesis suggested by Matteo Pericoli is this: since when we read we are always, more or less consciously, visitors of an imaginary space, then it is possible to attribute to our impression of a certain text a certain form. If we can explore its various parts with our minds, then we are not only able to describe them verbally but also to create spaces, voids and solids, that are the architectural equivalent of the story we are reading.
It is no longer a matter of merely visualizing settings: indeed, as Pericoli immediately clarifies, he is not interested in the “so-called locations” of a novel, because “focusing on them means, in general, missing an opportunity.” What the author proposes is something different: working out an architecture that reflects the structure of the text. How is it done? To find out, one must first get up to the first floor of this museum book, where, with a historical overview, Matteo Pericoli explains how every architecture, from the primitive hut to the Parthenon, from Brunelleschi’s dome to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, is in itself a story that needs to be interpreted.
Then, by continuing to the second floor, we can explore twelve interpretations of literary architectures: twelve works that are transformed into buildings. The catalog is varied and interesting, so much so that any good reader will want to read or reread the texts being discussed: from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Judge and His Hangman to Annie Ernaux’s Les Années, each work is drawn as if it were an installation or a building. There is also Italo Calvino, with his The Baron in the Trees.
These are evocative projects, mind games, ideal palaces and cities that overlap with the real ones in which we live and move. If you like the game, is the message, you can go ahead on your own, accumulating new literary architectures. And you will find that the books you love are cathedrals, humble courtyards, or invisible cities. Perhaps, the places where you will feel most at home.
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/La-Repubblica-Cultura-logo.jpg280596Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2023-04-16 18:52:002023-11-15 19:03:22Let’s play to discover the invisible cities of each novel
The artist is among the contributors to the Hypercritic Poethon at Scuola Holden
by Diego Molino
“Turin is unknowingly beautiful. It doesn’t know it is, but that is its strength.” That is how Matteo Pericoli, architect, designer, teacher and author, defines the city. He will be among the guests participating in the Hypercritic Poethon poetry marathon for a week, from tomorrow to March 27 (there will also be Margherita Oggero, Enrica Baricco, Serena Dandini, Igiaba Scego, Martino Gozzi, Ilaria Gaspari, Maurizio Gancitano, gipeto, Guido Catalano, Andrea Tarabbia, Alessandro Burbank, Yoko Yamada, Sara Benedetti, Andrea Tomaselli, Daniele De Cicco, Giorgia Cerruti, Silvia Cannarsa, Luca Gamberini, Emiliano Poddi). A journey that will draw inspiration from the places where the poems by different authors will be read: museums, gardens, case di ringhiera and old streetcars, thanks to the collaboration with Gtt and Associazione Torinese Tram Storici. All events are admission free subject to availability, so reservations are recommended on Eventbrite in the section dedicated to the event. Pericoli is featured on Friday at 6:45 p.m. at Scuola Holden with The Architecture of Poetry.
What do architecture and poetry have in common?
“Poetry is nothing but manufacture, and to know this you only have to look at its etymology, poièo in ancient Greek means to make, to create, to construct. Poetry is the strongest and most constructive act there is, it means putting words in a sequence, one after the other. Architecture in turn is modeling space, it has to do with relationships, spaces, voids and shadows, all things in common with poetry.”
So can we say that they are the same thing?
“There is a zone where all decisions, compositional ideas do not yet take the form of a specific discipline. It is the creative potential to which architecture, poetry, music and writing belong. Only later can each of us give these ideas and insights a well-defined form.”
Let’s talk about the architecture of cities. How is it possible to unearth their poetic soul?
“At first I thought that cities were agglomerates of buildings built very close to each other, and that this was purely for a reason of utility. I first found poetry while living in New York, it was a bit like when you fall in love with a person, it happens but you can’t explain why.”
Did you find the poetry you were looking for in Turin?
“When I arrived in Turin I found an unexpected and incredible energy and spirit. In a way the most similar place to New York is Porta Palazzo: it is in the center of the city, close to important and aulic institutional buildings, and yet there is an extremely real, intense mixture of life, and that reassures me. Porta Palazzo is one of those places that exist without needing to tell its story, because it communicates so much already as it is, just like New York.”
And what is its secret?
“Not to be self-conscious, this is the only way poetry manifests itself, otherwise it would be lost. It is also said in the film The Postman when Mario (Massimo Troisi) and Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) are sitting on the seashore and Mario has just told him that he felt ‘like a boat being knocked over by your words.’ Neruda tells Mario that he has just created a metaphor. ‘No!’ replies Mario blushing, ‘Really?’ Then he adds, ‘Whatever, but it doesn’t count because I didn’t want to do it.’ ‘Wanting is not important,’ Neruda tells him, ‘images are born unintentionally.’ That’s what it means to be unaware.”
Are there other places that inspire the same feeling for you in Turin?
“The walks along the Po hide an unusual idea of the city, it feels like you’re in the country but you’re in the middle of the center. It is a slice of nature that creeps inside the city, this is very poetic, it allows for strange intersections in your mind. In Turin, poetry is often hidden within things you don’t expect to find in a medium-sized city.”
Do urban transformations threaten to cause that poetry to be lost?
“It is wrong to think that a city must always be the same, it is like saying that a child must never grow up. Poetry lies in being able to watch and direct that growth; after all, cities are living organisms.”
https://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/La-Stampa-Torino-CS.jpg636844Matteo Pericolihttp://matteopericoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Matteo-Pericoli-70-300x138.pngMatteo Pericoli2023-03-20 16:54:002023-11-09 16:41:01“Porta Palazzo like New York, here there is the same mixture of life.”
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK
The artist is among the contributors to the Hypercritic Poethon at Scuola Holden
“When I arrived in Turin I found an unexpected and incredible energy and spirit. In a way the most similar place to New York is Porta Palazzo: it is in the center of the city, close to important and aulic institutional buildings, and yet there is an extremely real, intense mixture of life, and that reassures me. Porta Palazzo is one of those places that exist without needing to tell its story, because it communicates so much already as it is, just like New York.”
Are there other places that inspire the same feeling for you in Turin?