Confabulations : Storytelling in Architecture

by Paul Emmons, Marcia F. Feuerstein, Carolina Dayer

Confabulation is a drawing together through storytelling. Fundamental to our perception, memory, and thought is the way we join fractured experiences to construct a narrative. Storytelling in Architecture weaves together poetic ideas, objects, and events and returns you to everyday experiences of life through juxtapositions with dreams, fantasies, and hypotheticals. It follows the intellectual and creative framework of architectural cosmopoesis developed and practiced by the distinguished thinker, architect, and professor Dr. Marco Frascari, who thought deeply about the role of storytelling in architecture. Bringing together a collection of 24 essays from a diverse and respected group of scholars, this book presents the convergence of architecture and storytelling across a broad temporal, geographic, and cultural range. Beginning with an introduction framing the topic, the book is organized along a continuous thread structured around four key architecture of stories, stories of architecture, stories of theory and practice of stories. Beautifully illustrated throughout and including a 64-page full colour section, Confabulations is an insightful investigation into architectural narratives.

312 pages, Hardcover

Published December 14, 2016

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty of really interesting essays to read through – not always clearly on topic, but fun anyway. My favourite was ‘Camillo Sitte’s winged snail’ by Marcia Feurstein in which she investigates ‘festina lente’ – combining slow and quick – through emblems reproduced in various tomes. They include Sitte's winged snail but also a dolphin entwined with an anchor; light and heavy, agile and stationary, the idea is that flashes of understanding come from long contemplating, that quickness comes via maturity, and that good ideas come through careful consideration, and suggests “a period of wandering before striking the balance”. A bit like a metaphor combining two similar (although often also oppositional) elements to bring about a new entity, new idea, a synthesis, the emblems are greater than the sum of their parts… fabulous! (or should I say confabulous!)