Literary methods in architectural research and design
The 2nd international conference on Architecture and Fiction:
TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture, 25-27 November 2013

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
deadline July 1st 2013

The conference “Writingplace - literary methods in architectural research and design” is the second international conference on Architecture and Fiction, and will be held in The Netherlands, at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology, between 25-27 November 2013. As the research platform that supports it, this event aims to explore alternative ways of reading and designing architecture, urban places and landscapes through literary means. While the first conference on Architecture and Fiction (Once Upon a Place, Lisbon 2010), had a more general focus on the connections between architecture and literature, this conference will have the use of literary methods for architectural and urban research and design as a central topic. A set of crucial questions has been set forth by the organizing committee as guidelines for debate and discussion. Among these are:

- If literature can offer an alternative perspective to the experience, use and imagination of place, how can a literary gaze generate alternative methods for site research and architectural design?

- How can the reading of sites allow for new interpretations of historical traces, for new writings of place?

- How can we re-read eminent literary works and learn from these for contemporary architectural and urban practice?

- What can literary methods, such as narrative, character, scenario and poetry writing mean in regard to architectural and urban analysis and design?

These questions will be approached by means of five “scriptive” themes (description, transcription, prescription, inscription and rescription), allowing participants and interested parties to explore the question of literary methods from different perspectives.
The conference invites researchers, architects and writers from the fields of architecture, urban planning and literary studies who are interested in or work on the connections between literature and the constitution of the built environment, to submit an abstract (max. 400 words) with their proposal, by July 1st, 2013 at the writingplace.org conference page. Each abstract must include the full name(s) of the author(s), affiliation and a clear indication of the preferred session theme. A full description of the aforementioned scriptive themes follows.