The Reflection of Medusa: A Review of The City of Imagination

Abstract

The lately published <i>The City of Imagination</i> by Valerio Morabito challenges the pictorial idea of landscape interpretation and explores the possibilities of storytelling to read and represent the landscape that focuses on the literary and communicative aptitudes of Landscape Architecture. The article reviews the book from the perspective of history, epistemology, method, and reception regarding its literary root, which is notably inspired by Italo Calvino. The review consists of four sections: First, word and image: the historical exemplars of landscape representation between pictorial and verbal tradition. Second, memory and foresight: the authenticity of travelogue and Morabito’s method of working with his travel memories. Third, truth and myth: how Morabito applies the cognitive imperfection in storytelling to his empirical approach that counterbalances the positivist reading of the landscape. And fourth, form and language: the tension between the formal autonomy and the bardic tradition in the visual language of Morabito. The article approaches and further opens the essential dialogues between the palpable existence and fictive landscape, the interpretation and consumption of the thick meanings in human inhabitation, and the cognitive antinomy and reconciliation of positivist and humanistic stances in the discipline.