Figure 5 The Laboratory of Architecture Students interpreting Amy Hempel's "The Harvest" into a physical form (Boushira et. Al, n.d

REVITILIZING THE HISTORICAL ESSENCE OF THE GEM AREA THROUGH LITERARY ARCHITECTURE NOHA HATEM MOSTAFA The following section will discuss the process and product of merging and integrating architecture and literature through studying various creative writings turned into expressive forms. It is followed then by showing the effect architectural movements has on literary works. The second section will introduce theory of “Chronotope Architecture” which will be discussed in depth according to the definitions and works of philosophers and architecture theorists.

2.1. Integration between Architecture and Literature

Philosophers argued that both architecture and literature are interdependent where it shows that architecture can act as an incentive for literature and literature can be translated into spatial forms of architecture where both lead to a unified approach of expressive forms called literary architecture. Literary Architecture is the bi-product of literature and architecture. It is an ideological study of architecture design that focuses on two contrasting yet complimentary forms of art; architecture and literature (Chan, 2019). As Matteo Perocoli, founder of The Laboratory of Literary Architecture, stated “it’s a cross-disciplinary exploration of literature as architecture.” (Stein, 2013) Therefore, this argument shows the effect each of these forms of art has on each other.

2.1.1. Expressive Architectural Forms through Creative Writing

This approach is conducted by the founder of The Laboratory of Literary Architecture, Matteo Perocoli. As a writer and architect, his workshop incorporates between creative writing and architecture. Colum McCann, a student of Perocoli, stated that “The process of adding word to word is much the same as adding brick to brick…I can’t think of a better course where the purposes of two arts are so finely blended.” Perocoli’s class mantra is “literary. Not literal.” It encourages students to get their favourite books, chapters, short stories ...etc. and extract expressions, metaphors or feelings to interpret into physical forms. (Stein, 2013)

A project that used Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” as an incentive for their model, depicted Hemingway’s symbolism of a never-ending misunderstanding and miscommunication between a married couple who cannot see eye to eye into a model that has the user moving around in circles. (Prescott, 1988) Ernest’s literary piece ended before the conversation between the couple was done because their perspective was never the same, so the story metaphorically showed the never-ending cycle. Perocoli’s students interpreted this struggle as it appears in Figure (4) into a physical model with a fragmented circle that when looked at, at first,seem tangled, however, they do not meet, similarly to the mentioned couple. (Wang et. Al, n.d)

Figure 4 Students of The Laboratory of Architecture interpreting Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" into a physical form (Wang et. Al,n.d.)

REVITILIZING THE HISTORICAL ESSENCE OF THE GEM AREA THROUGH LITERARY ARCHITECTURE NOHA HATEM MOSTAFA

Another project from the workshop interpreted Amy Hempel’s “The Harvest” from her short story collection “At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom”, as it is shown in Figure (5), into a changing structure with different angles and plane. Amy Hempel’s piece was to readjust the truth, to show that exaggeration plays a big part of our stories, so she kept changing the story; same story, different angles, different truths and facts. (Hempel, 1995) The students interpreted her changing truths into four tangled and intersecting planes, showing where part of her stories intersected with some truths. (Boushira et. Al, n.d)

Figure 5 The Laboratory of Architecture Students interpreting Amy Hempel's "The Harvest" into a physical form (Boushira et. Al, n.d)

The aforementioned theories and interpretations showed the effect literary works has on architecture; how with a few keywords, emotions, struggles and thoughts could be conveyed through a visualized space. The following sub-section will discuss the opposite effect, how architecture affects literature.

2.1.2.Architecture Movements in Literature

Poets, by nature, have an affinity andadmiration for all kinds of art, and as aforementioned, architecture is a visualized string of art. Gerard Manley Hopkins, a leading Victorian poet was enthralled by architectureand used various buildings and structures as inspiration for his poems. Hopkins never went into the architectural description of the buildings inspiring his pieces; however, he takes them as inspiration of setting, architectural details; the parts rather than the whole, as it appears from his description of Windsor Palace. “As we approached Windsor the London smoke met us rolling up the valley of the Thames. Windsor stood out in the evening light: I think there can be no place like it—the eye-greeting burl of the Round Tower; all the crownlike medley [sic] of lower towers warping round; red and white houses of the town abutting on these, gabled and irregularly jut-jotted against them, making a third stage or storey.” (JP, 256, 1874)He was also an enthusiast for the architecture and designs of William Butterfield, where he wrote a poem named “To Oxford” based of Butterfield’s Balliot’s Chapel, University of Oxford. The following excerpt is from said poem: (Robichaud, n.d.)