Homing Objects: From Writing to Making

Can architects design with words? Can they move from words to models and then hands on making, bypassing the medium of drawing altogether? “Homing Objects” was a recent four-week workshop that tested this possibility. The workshop–part of the master level design course “The Space of Words” which explored different ways to address the above...

Poems In Space: “Au de Cologne/Sour Theater”

Engaging the masterclass “Eau de Cologne/sour theater” that took place in a recent master-level studio-course of architecture, this paper examines the role of poetry in exploring the stories of a place and in building students’ capacity for storytelling. The masterclass, which lasted for ten days, is titled after a line from Tristan Tzara’s...

Special Issue Writing Urban Places: New Narratives of the European City

The special issue Writing Urban Places: New Narratives on the European City, marks the culmination of an international research network that delved into the intricate interplay between communities, urban spaces and narratives. At its core, this endeavour introduced an inventive approach aimed at deepening our comprehension of urban communities,...

Delft: Views on Delft

Around 1661, Johannes Vermeer painted what has become one of the most famous city views: the View of Delft. The city of Delft is depicted from across the water of the River Schie. We see the city as a collection of brick buildings with lower and higher towers, peaking into the sky, and being reflected in the water of the river. The light looks...

Intermediate European Cities: Conditions Between Metropolis and Town

This article will discuss the conditions that define the intermediate European city at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the mid-size, other or secondary city as it many times appears in the relevant bibliography, although these terms fail to capture its full potential. We argue that the intermediate European city cannot simply be...

Osijek: Mapping the Fictional and the Physical City: The Spatiotemporal and Cultural Identity of Osijek, Croatia

Because of its status as the fourth largest city in Croatia, Osijek is considered an intermediate European city. It is the administrative, economic and cultural centre of eastern Croatia, located on the River Drava, and has a rich, multicultural history that is reflected in its tangible and intangible urban identity. It is famous for its...

Building with Stories: The Space of Words Design Studio

Engaging the educational context, topic, working process, and theoretical framework of the first month of The Space of Words design studio, this article addresses the threshold of graduate education. The article presents the potential for stories and modelmaking to foster strong collaborations among peers — particularly within a multicultural...

Beginning Architecture: Contextualising Thresholds in Architectural Education

Where do we begin? Architecture is a profession riddled with many orientations, directions, and perspectives. How one favours what to signify in representation is equally open in processes, methodologies and approaches to form-making, spatial ordering, material choices, and so forth. The educational process is similar; it is riddled with...

City Narratives as Places of Meaningfulness, Appropriation and Integration

This issue is an invitation to look beyond the definitions of meaningfulness, appropriation and integration, and explore the relations between them. We have liberally arranged the articles under the three main themes but, as it can easily become clear, there are overlaps among the themes. In that way, this issue offers not only a geographical...

Watermarks of architecture

Engaging Joseph Brodsky’s compelling novella Watermark (1992) — a wintertime account of Venice — this paper unpacks embodied experiences in a place of paramount cultural and historical heritage. The literary language captures the city’s emotional character — portraying how it affects our consciousness and subsequent behaviours — by describing...

Stories for Architectural Imagination

This essay focuses on imagination as a crucial source of innovation and makes a plea for an approach to architectural education that enables imaginative thinking about new spatial and temporal realities. It starts by foregrounding the strong connections between imagination, stories, and language. It then proposes the reading, telling, writing...

Binckhorst: A Palimpsest of Architectural Lives

Engaging the example of the course “Binckhorst: A Palimpsest of Architectural Lives”—a master level design studio—this paper addresses issues of cohabitation and coexistence between past and current actors, activities and programs in Binckhorst, The Hague. It discusses explorative methodologies of analysis and design, that aim to create...

Choices and Strategies of Spatial Imagination

Architecture is by definition an act of spatial imagination, this wondrous capacity to envision possible futures for the built environment. Spatial imagination is essential in order to visualize new constructions taking shape, evolving in time, and partaking of the cultural expression of a place or era. It takes spatial imagination to foresee...

Narrative Presencing of Architectural Monuments: Atmospheres in Seibo There Below

Engaging a selection of narratives from the episodic novel Seibo There Below (2008) by László Krasznahorkai, this paper discusses how literature can enable the atmospheric presencing of well-known architectural monuments’ atmospheres. Belonging to a genre of literature that depicts historical locations and buildings without fictional...

‘The unacceptability of the erasures’: John Hejduk’s texts for the ‘Berlin Masque’

Engaging Hejduk’s compelling project, ‘Berlin Masque’ (1981), this paper looks into writing’s power to develop unforeseen possibilities of architectural program. In his ‘Berlin Masque’ proposal, unlike his earlier ‘Masques’, Hejduk clearly prioritizes his prose – not his small accompanying sketches – as the place where the architectural...