Liangi, Ifigeneia;
(2022)
Tales from the Blossomed Bitter-orange Forest.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
My research sits within the field of architectural storytelling. The architect storyteller is the designer who makes spaces that speak through intentional allegorical messages. My practice engages with writing, modelling, drawing, as well as studying and learning from literary fiction and related disciplines for the creation of a wondrous and subversive architecture. The two narrative modes that I use are magical realism and the fairytale, and my proposal is in the form of a written and drawn story. In Greece there is a strong presence of literary magical realist fairytales and an extensive absence of architectural ones. As a literary story cannot be told without characters, I suggest that architectural storytelling can be enhanced with the use of figures. Identifying the presence of figurative architecture in ancient Greece and its extensive absence in the contemporary one, I propose a new type of figurative for Greece based on magical realist fairytales instead of myths. This architecture is important because it can convey messages in wondrous ways while being subversive of the normative, which results from socio-political and economic circumstances. My methodology brings together fields outside of architecture, including translation studies, cultural studies, illustration and literary fiction. Through interlingual and intersemiotic translations, I engage with questions of cultural interpretation, authorship, originality and the idea that a textual translation can be architectural. My methodology touches on ideas of the future of magical realism and the complexities of reading a magical realist novel from a different country, suggesting that differences of meaning can be propositional. Overall, my research aims to enhance architecture’s potential for telling stories. My practice builds an argument for a magical architecture that engages with an emotional and a poetic stance to the world and for a critical architecture that engages with an intellectual and ethical stance to the world.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Tales from the Blossomed Bitter-orange Forest |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10150342 |
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