September 30, 2016 Literary Architecture Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Judge and His Hangman By Matteo Pericoli Matteo Pericoli is the founder of the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, an interdisciplinary project that looks at fiction through the lens of architecture, designing and building stories as architectural projects. In this series, he shares some of his designs and what they reveal about the stories they’re modeled on. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s mystery novel The Judge and His Hangman revolves around a sudden nighttime encounter between chief detective Bärlach, an inspector with the Bern police, and his eternal rival, Gastmann. Read More
July 25, 2016 Literary Architecture Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five By Matteo Pericoli Longtime readers of the Daily will remember Matteo Pericoli’s Windows on the World project, which featured his pen-and-ink drawings of the views from writers’ windows around the world. Matteo is also the founder of the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, an interdisciplinary project that looks at fiction through the lens of architecture, designing and building stories as architectural projects. In this new series, Matteo shares some of his designs and what they reveal about the stories they’re modeled on. How can a horrific event, so monstrous it seems incomprehensible, be told? How does one even find the words to write about it? In the opening chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut recounts his being unable to write a war book about the Dresden firebombing (February 13–15, 1945), which he survived: “there is nothing intelligent to tell about a massacre.” Read More
June 27, 2016 Literary Architecture Annie Ernaux, Les années By Matteo Pericoli Longtime readers of the Daily will remember Matteo Pericoli’s Windows on the World project, which featured his pen-and-ink drawings of the views from writers’ windows around the world. Matteo is also the founder of the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, an interdisciplinary project that looks at fiction through the lens of architecture, designing and building stories as architectural projects. In this new series, Matteo shares some of his designs and what they reveal about the stories they’re modeled on. There is a moment in Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel, Les années, in which the author writes that she “would like to unify the multiplicity of images of herself—separate, disjoined—through the thread of a story: that of her existence […] fused to the movement of a generation.” (Translation mine.) Read More
May 31, 2016 Literary Architecture Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees By Matteo Pericoli Longtime readers of the Daily will remember Matteo Pericoli’s Windows on the World project, which featured his pen-and-ink drawings of the views from writers’ windows around the world. Matteo is also the founder of the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, an interdisciplinary project that looks at fiction through the lens of architecture, designing and building stories as architectural projects. In this new series, Matteo shares some of his designs and what they reveal about the stories they’re modeled on. “Rebellion cannot be measured by yards … Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return.” This is Baron Arminio Piovasco di Rondò’s response to his son Cosimo, the protagonist of Italo Calvino’s novel The Baron in the Trees, when, having decided to escape his suffocating family life by climbing a tree near his house, Cosimo declares his intention never to come down again. Read More