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Abstract
This study of the relationships between spaces and stories reconsiders the common conception of architecture as a constructive art that shapes buildings and streets, so that they accommodate and represent the patterns of our lives. I imagine it will not be controversial to say that architectural works are fabricated. But when it is said they are made, possibly few will understand what I shall suggest: that they are made-up much the way stories are, that the two, stories and spaces are sibling fictions. Architectural construction is obviously productive. New buildings are added to the urban and rural topographies we occupy, to satisfy previously unmet desires. Can it be said that stories are similarly additive, altering, and enhancing, because they intensify emotions, deepen understanding, and enrich character? Are their influences similarly public? A few definitions will help me address these and related questions.
Notes
Notes
1 Ben Jonson, “Of the magnitude and compass of any fable, epic or dramatic,” in “Timber: or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter,” Appendix 1, The Complete Poems (London: Penguin Books, 1975), 454 (lines 3317–3330). This posthumously published text, the second volume of his writings, basically a commonplace book, is titled Timber on the title page and Explorata on the first page of the text. The ultimate source of his account of the “fable” is Aristotle’s Poetics, but he could have read and here may be summarizing any one of a large number of commentaries.
2 Among the several texts I’ve consulted, a paper the philosopher Paul Ricoeur presented to a group of architects has been the most useful. See “Architecture and Narrative,” in Pietro Derossi, ed., Identità i Differenze, vol. 1, The 19th Triennale di Milano, 1996 (Milan: Electa, 1996), 64–72.
3 Admittedly, in architecture today the making of surveys is typically seen as an instrumental operation, performed for purely practical purposes, seeking objective information or data, sometimes big data. In what follows I do not want to renounce or reject that view, still less the practice to which it refers. My aim instead is to show that all surveys are taken from individual and variable points of view, and the drawings that result betray the motivating interests or concerns of the design. Because lengths, widths, and heights will be decisive in design development, surveys are often dimensioned on orthographic views. Some architects, like Alvaro Siza and Le Corbusier, for example, also dimensioned perspective views.
4 Le Corbusier, interview with the Dominican community, October 1960, “Le Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette construit par Le Corbusier,” L’Art sacré nos. 7–8 (March–April 1960).
5 Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “Preexisting Conditions and Issues of Contemporary Building Practice [1955],” in Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture 1943–1968 (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 200–204.
6 Louis I. Kahn, “The Value and Aim in Sketching,” T-Square Club Journal 1:6 (May 1931): 19–21. Subject matter was not specified in the text, its illustrations include still life studies and rural scenes. I’m extending the range of subjects to include project sites, such as those this text illustrates.
7 Kahn, “The Value and Aim in Sketching”: 21.
8 Kahn, “The Value and Aim in Sketching”: 21.
9 I have made a similar but more detailed study of Kahn’s preliminary encounter with a site in: “The Beginning of the Beginning: Louis I. Kahn’s Site Sketches at the Salk Institute,” in Louis Kahn: The Importance of Drawing, Michael Merrill, ed. (Baden: Lars Müller, 2021), 66–77.
10 A very helpful history and interpretation of this project can be found in Peter Shedd Reed, Toward Form: Louis I. Kahn’s Urban Designs for Philadelphia, 1939–1962 (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1989), 36–92.
11 Louis I. Kahn, letter to Howard Myers, May 9, 1947, Louis I. Kahn Archives, Box 61, misc., cited in Reed, Toward Form, 68.
12 Christopher Morley, “Sauntering,” Philadelphia Travels (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1937), 10–14.
13 A parallel practice, at one’s desk not on the street, is, of course, “close reading.” Works of architecture and art can also be read closely. With Sherlock Holmes as one of my guides, Carlo Ginsburg the other, I’ve addressed this in: “God is in the Detail: On Evidence and Imagination,” A World of Architectural History, Bartlett School of Architecture, May 21, 2021, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/news/2021/may/explore-new-video-archive-world-architectural-history-conference
14 Morley, “Sauntering,” 11.
15 Morley, “Sauntering,” 10.
16 These techniques precede Morley and reappear after him. Noteworthy cases include John Gay, Trivia; or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London 1716 (London: Daniel O’Connor, 1922) and Georges Perec, “The Street, Practical Exercises,” in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 50–54, though the duration of Perec’s observations required taking a seat.
17 Morley, “Sauntering,” 29–32.
18 William Jordy, in what remains the best study of the building, observed that five levels are visible and another three are implied; see William H. Jordy, “PSFS: Its Development and Its Significance in Modern Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, May, 1962 21:2 (May 1962): 47–83.
19 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 42–45 esp.
20 See Jordy, “PSFS: Its Development”: 92.
21 George Howe, “The Architect and The Philosopher, A Dialogue by Correspondence” (unpublished manuscript), George Howe Collection, Avery Library, Columbia University.
22 The grid extends a three-part structure elaborated by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, cited above, in “Architecture and Narrative.” I’ve listed his terms, figuration, configuration, and reconfiguration, and introduced familiar equivalents in architecture and literature.
23 Henry James, “Philadelphia,” The American Scene, 1907 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 273–302.
24 James, “Philadelphia,” 299.
25 Henry James, The Art of Fiction and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 10. This essay first appeared in Partial Portraits (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888).
26 James, The Art of Fiction, 17.
27 James, The Art of Fiction, 16.
28 James, “Philadelphia,” 282.
29 On the cultural foundation of kinship see: Marshall Sahlins, What Kinship Is … And Is Not (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
30 James, “Philadelphia,” 279.
31 Contemporary readers will find the notion particularly grating, as we become increasingly aware of the injustices that have long been concealed under the surface of apparent equality.
32 James, “Philadelphia” 280.
33 James, “Philadelphia,” 294.
34 Peter Handke, Short Letter, Long Farewell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974).
35 Handke, Short Letter, Long Farewell, 47.
36 Handke, Short Letter, Long Farewell, 66.
37 On this see Christoph Parry, Peter Handke’s Landscapes of Discourse (Riverside: Ariadne, 2003).
38 Plato, Republic, 414b–415d.
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David Leatherbarrow
David Leatherbarrow’s research focuses on history and theory of architecture and the city. He has taught theory and design at the University of Pennsylvania since 1984, and before that at Cambridge University and the University of Westminster (formerly PCL) in England. He lectures throughout the world, has held honorary professorships in Denmark, Brazil, and China, and is the 2020 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education.