On literature and architecture

Abstract

Setting off from interdisciplinary research between the fields of architecture and literature this paper examines pedagogical experimentations that foreground literary imagination for drawing and design. The educational approach presented, emerges from a theoretical framework studying how imagination – an often overlooked aspect of architectural education – works. Through recent findings in neuroscience (H. Mallgrave), that corroborate philosophical underpinning from hermeneutical phenomenology (P. Ricoeur and R. Kearney), this methodology explores possibilities in cultivating students’ literary imagination. Literary imagination – emerging from the polysemic and metaphorical language of literature (A. Pérez-Gómez) – negates the common understanding of imagination as a form of vision, a special or modified way of seeing the world. The related discourse postulates that imagination works less in terms of “vision” and more in terms of “language.” It advocates that only through language can imagination lead to original spatial understandings and become a catalyst for dreaming up architectural possibilities (M. Frascari).