Urban Literacy: A Scriptive Approach to the Experience, Use and Imagination of Place

This dissertation discusses how literature offers valuable ways to become aware of how people experience, use, and imagine places. It argues that Lefebvre’s concept of "lived space", experienced and lived through by characters, evoking memories and imaginations, is the space that we encounter in the evocative descriptions of places and spaces by literary writers. The hypothesis of this work is that if existing literature can provide such insights, a literary approach using instruments from literature is also conceivable within the domain of architectural research and even of architectural design. To address the different perspectives that a literary approach to architecture can provide, the work proposes a triad of interrelated concepts: description, transcription and prescription. Each of the three branches of this literary bridge connects to a slightly different discourse and examples of architectural and literary practices. Together, the terms description, transcription and prescription supply a framework to address lived experience and develop tools for spatial research and design. Literary references include Proust, Calvino, Oulipo, Breton, Aragon, Joyce and Danielewski, while the work of architects Steven Holl, Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas are discussed as "scriptive" architectural practices