Abstract
Whereas Lanyon represents creative thought in explicitly architectural terms, Christian Illies focuses on architecture as a stimulus to further forms of creativity. Writing about the strange mix of fear and allure that attaches itself to buildings with grisly pasts, he explores the auras and atmospheres that are inspired by built spaces and, in turn, are projected onto them. Looking chiefly at texts and artworks from the twentieth century, Illies suggests that such magical, mythical approaches to built space enable a discourse he terms ‘narrative beauty’. This beauty, Illies argues (in ideas that take a Ricoeurian slightly Heideggerian bent) can help human beings find a meaningful place in the world.
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Notes
- 1.
Some investors have specialised in buying this kind of property in order to sell it or rent it out to tenants who are more relaxed about this aspect of property, especially to foreigners from Europe or the USA, or to doctors or nurses (‘who are used to working around the dead’ as the real estate agent Eric Wong observes). Peter Shadbolt, ‘Hong Kong’s Hot Market in “Haunted” Houses’, CNN, available at http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/22/world/asia/hong-kong-haunted-houses/index.html [accessed 20 January 2018].
- 2.
See Lauren Whalen, ‘A History of Chicago’s Murder Castle’, http://chicagoist.com/2015/11/02/i_was_born_with_the_devil_in_me_a_h.php [accessed 11 February 2018].
- 3.
Kelly Chronis, ‘Real Estate’s 10 Most Haunted Houses on the Market’, available at MyDomaine, http://www.mydomaine.com/real-estates-10-most-haunted-houses-on-the-market [accessed 21 June 2018].
- 4.
It is worth studying German to be able to appreciate the affective nature of Storm’s lyrics more fully. The English translation quoted here is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Storm [accessed 29 January 2018].
- 5.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. by Maria Jolas, 2nd edn (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. 7.
- 6.
Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 31.
- 7.
Ricoeur, Time and Narration, p. 31.
- 8.
Paul Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, Ricoeur Studies, 7 (2016), 31–41.
- 9.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 39.
- 10.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 32.
- 11.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 33.
- 12.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 33.
- 13.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 32.
- 14.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 36.
- 15.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 36.
- 16.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 39.
- 17.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 39.
- 18.
Ricoeur, ‘Architecture and Narrativity’, p. 39.
- 19.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), p. 98.
- 20.
Jacob Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte: Staat und Religion (Leipzig: Kröner 1929).
- 21.
According to Scandinavian mythology, each tree has its own spirit, which occasionally incarnates as a human being and returns to the tree after that person’s death. Consequently, ‘before cutting a tree, ancient Scandinavians would formally address the forest, reminding it of the consideration they had always shown toward the trees and asking the forest to grant use of a tree for construction of their home.’ From ‘History of the “Topping Out” Ceremony’, Columbia University School of Social Work, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20120611090101/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ssw/news/apr03/history.html [accessed 6 June 2012].
- 22.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘On a Ruined house in a Romantic Country’, Coleridge’s Verse: A Selection (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 118.
- 23.
Martin Düchs and I have elaborated the claim that architectural atmosphere is experienced and articulated in a narrative form in much more detail in Martin Düchs and Christian Illies, ‘Editorial: The Human in Architecture and Philosophy: Steps towards an Architectural Anthropology’, Architecture & Philosophy Special Issue: Philosophical Anthropology, 3.1 (2018).
- 24.
De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 109.
- 25.
Michael Foucault, ‘Des espaces autres’, in Dits et Ecrits (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pp. 752–62.
- 26.
See Francisco Gonzalez De Canales, and Nicholas Ray, Rafael Moneo: Building, Teaching, Writing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
- 27.
Boguslaw Krasnowolski, ‘Muster urbanistischer Anlagen von Lokationsstädten in Kleinpolen, Forschungsstand, Methoden und Versuch einer Synthese’, in Rechtsstadtgründungen im mittelalterlichen Polen, ed. by Erich Mühle (Köln: Böhlau, 2011), pp. 275–322 (p. 321).
- 28.
De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 109.
- 29.
Paul Ricoeur, ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in On Paul Ricoeur, ed. by D. Wood (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 29.
- 30.
Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 2: Das mythische Denken (Berlin: B. Cassirer: 1925); Jean Gebser Ursprung und Gegenwart (Schaffhausen: Novalis, 1979), published in English as The Ever-Present Origin (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985).
- 31.
Ricoeur’s three steps of dwelling, building, and responding are meant to echo the title of Heidegger’s great 1951 lecture Bauen Wohnen Denken (Building Dwelling Thinking).
- 32.
Katharina Dippold, ‘Die Wohnungssuche ist vergleichbar mit der Partnerwahl’, Iconist, available at https://www.welt.de/icon/design/article173100621/Immobilienmakler-Ziegert-Wohnungssuche-ist-wie-Partnerwahl.html [accessed 2 February 2018].
- 33.
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p. xxxvii.
- 34.
Michael Foucault, ‘Des espaces autres’.
- 35.
Foucault, ‘Des espaces autres’, p. 762.
- 36.
This is from the debate ‘Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture: The 1982 Debate Between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman’, Katarxis, 3 (September 2004), available at http://www.katarxis3.com/Alexander_Eisenman_Debate.htm [accessed 2 February 2018]. Though their positions are more complex than this suggests, in broad terms Eisenman agrees that modernity is accompanied by an anxiety which cries out for change but, following Adorno, does not want to mellow this revolutionary spirit: ‘I do not believe that the way to go, as you suggest, is to put up structures to make people feel comfortable, to preclude that anxiety. What is a person to do if he cannot react against anxiety or see it pictured in his life? […] And so the role of art or architecture might be just to remind people that everything wasn’t all right’.
- 37.
Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (London: MIT Press, 1997), p. 362.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Klaus Bieberstein, Martin Düchs, Jane Griffiths, Andreas Grüner, Adam Hanna, Friederike Illies (always), Gisela Lilje, Bernhard Malkmus, Graeme Napier, Nick Ray, Sabine Vogt, and Christiania Whitehead for stimulating discussions, inspirations, critique, information, or help.
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Illies, C. (2020). Murmuring Houses for the Mythical Mind. In: Griffiths, J., Hanna, A. (eds) Architectural Space and the Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36067-2_3
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