Between Literature and Architecture

Abstract

Dutch architect, author, and scholar Klaske Havik examines literature as an (un)common precedent for architectural design. She describes two approaches; the first uses literature as a source of knowledge by studying how buildings and places are described in literature. The second approach involves the use of literary writing methods as a mode of spatial analysis, foregrounding social and temporal dimensions, sensory perceptions, and everyday social practices. Havik engages in a dialogue with scholar Isabel Potworowski and the coordinator of the (Un)common Workshop on Literature and Architecture, scholar and architect Suzanne Harris-Brandts. In the workshop, fourth-year urbanism students at Carleton University studied the urban and sociopolitical history of their project site in Tirana, Albania by making large, collaboratively produced experiential collages based on selected narratives from Margo Rejmer’s 2018 book Mud Sweeter Than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania. The collages re-spatialized these narratives across the architectural, urban, and regional scales relative to the past, present, and future.