The Routledge companion on architecture, literature and the city

This Companion breaks new ground in our knowledge and understanding of the diverse relationships between literature, architecture, and the city, which together form a field of interdisciplinary research that is one of the most innovative and exciting to have emerged in recent years. Bringing together a wide variety of contributors, not only writers, architectural and literary scholars, and social scientists, but graphic novelists and artists, the book offers contemporary essays on everything from science fiction and the crime novel, to poetry, comics and oral history. It is structured into two sections: History, Narrative and Genre, and Strategy, Language and Form. Including over ninety illustrations, the book is a must read for academics and students. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of figures 9 Preface 14 Foreword 16 Author biographies 20 Introduction: Narrative construction and constructing narratives 26 SECTION I: History, Narrative and Genre 32 1 Taking the measure of the incommensurable: Architectural representation of the improbable 34 2 Modernity as ambiguity in Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games 50 3 Domestic digressions: Interrogating Singaporean public housing through its literary forms 62 4 Plots of land: Urban regeneration in contemporary British procedural novels 83 5 Inequality in Aluísio Azevedo’s O cortiço 107 6 An unliteral construct: the architecture of Graham Greene’s ‘The Destructors’: A sedimentary lesson in post-war social change 121 7 “Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too...”: Dublin, Mexico City, Tokyo 129 8 Written cities: Utopian fiction, spatial ordering, and absurdity 145 9 The architecture of Yi Sang’s Nalgae 161 10 The cold war finds a common home: The intertwined worlds of Philip K. Dick and the Strugatsky Brothers 177 SECTION II: Strategy, Language and Form 202 11 Literary language and architectural meaning: Mood in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s House of Jealousy 204 12 False landscape syndrome: The poetry and propaganda of Andrew Jordan 215 13 The city in the Brazilian novel: Posthumous memoirs and other writings 234 14 Magic mirrors: Reconstructing lost interiors from instructional and constructional writing 258 15 Volver a no saber: Poetry, architecture and the beginnings of Open City 271 16 Writing atmospheres: Literary methods to investigate the thresholds of architectural experience 295 17 The Laboratory of Literary Architecture: The joy of cardboard, glue, and storytelling: a cross-disciplinary exploration of literature as architecture 308 18 Glasgow’s Italian Centres: Narrative, identity, regeneration 331 19 ‘Stop leaning against the wall – it’s wet!’ (BANKSY): Writing on the wall and urban space 352 20 Comics and architecture: a reading guide: Telling architecture(s): comics, cartoons and graphic narrative in architecture 372 21 Figuring speech: Before and after writing 410 Index 436 "This Companion breaks new ground in our knowledge and understanding of the diverse relationships between literature, architecture, and the city, which together form a field of interdisciplinary research that is one of the most innovative and exciting to have emerged in recent years. Bringing together a wide variety of contributors, not only writers, architectural and literary scholars, and social scientists, but graphic novelists and artists, the book offers contemporary essays on the subject, resulting in the definitive and comprehensive guide to the field. The book is structured into three sections: Literature as Modern Urban History, Narrative Strategies, and Language and Form. Including over 70 black and white illustrations, it opens up a creative dialogue between image and text and explores how visual and textual narratives can be creatively combined. This text is a must read for academics and students who have an interest in multidisciplinary research across architecture, literature and cities"-- Provided by publisher