Concrete Tower Lannach Knock on Wood
Roger Riewe/Armin Stocker (eds.)
Graz: Publishing Company of Graz University of Technology, 2017
German, 61 pages, paperback
ISBN 978-3-85125-537-2
ISBN 978-3-85125-537-9 (open Access eBook)
EUR 14.00

Can architecture be mediated narrativley? Is it possible for architectural spaces and designs to be developed through narrative texts and thus to transpose fictional, conceptual spaces into a real-world equivalent? How can architecture be conceived and written from within the site, and can the spatial designs created in this way be rendered with means adequate for architecture and then implemented in a project? These explorative questions - based on the assumption that culture is essentially communication and that communication is chiefly language-based - forms the basis and the point of departure for a design exercise in the Institute of Architecture Technology at Graz University of Technology.
Exemplary projects by Michel Houellebecq, Georges Perec, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Auster, and Franz Hessel serve to explore the concept of narrative space and the fictive extrapolation of reality by means of literary text forms.
The semester theses now compiled in book form illustrate how fiction can be a suitable agent as a starting point for tapping into reality and a first step in developing an architectural design. Ideas and possibilities that lead to the development and materialization of architectural space are first conceived and written down in spaces of agency and movement. The subsequent step leads from sketch to design.

Roger Riewe is an architect, university professor, and chair of the Institute of Architectural Technology.
Armin Stocker is architect and associate professor at the Institute of Architecture Technology.