After successful completion of the course, students are able to implement methods of architectonic writing, and can confidently articulate and balance concepts, styles and voices adequate for the contemporary world.

This course is a cooperation between ATTP and the Chair for CAAD at ETH Zurich.

CUT

creative writing for architects

Architecture is already saturated in images. To properly articulate the digital cosmos of today what we need is writing and code.

The problem addressed in this course is how to allow the digital cosmos to find its voice, and how you as architects can inhabit this voice to speak both freely and carefully, both playfully and seriously, from word-building to world-building.

No creative writing experience is required; you can forget everything you have learned. We will use experimental writing modes, movements and exercises to find ways to develop agility and grace in writing by testing the motility of concepts such as light and matter, gravity and grace, night and day.

You will form your own voices, forms and styles. We will all start with the initial theme of SATURATION. The digital cosmos is saturated. Saturation is extreme. Saturation is overwhelming. Saturation is beyond what is required.

Each week there will be a lecture followed by a group discussion. There will be a short text to read each week, and a short writing experiment to do. Readings will be provided online.

The task of the architect-writer here is to inhabit and write with this saturation; to find voices to properly articulate the saturated world. This requires skill and balance; gravity and agility; humour and lightness. During the course you will be guided through the process of writing texts which playfully inhabit the styles of the following: fragments of ancient epic poetry, Renaissance sonnets, modernist avant-garde poems and contemporary voices. 

Provisional program 

ATTP Seminar Room, Thursdays, 2-4

 1.     Thursday 3 March -- Intro

2.     Thursday 10 March -- Table

3.     Thursday 17 March -- Voice

4.     Thursday 24 March -- Elements

5.     Thursday 31 March -- Code

Easter break: 4.04 --- 23.04

6.     Thursday 28 April -- Cipher

7.     Thursday 5 May -- Aleatorics

8.     Thursday 12 May -- Sense

9.     Thursday 16 December -- Mechanics

10.  Thursday 19 May -- Play

11.  Thursday 26 May -- Writing workshop: present your texts for feedback and discussion

12.  Monday 30 May, 2-6 (provisional date)  -- Final crits

Assessment 

You will build your own digital epic using the texts you have developed throughout the course.

lectures, readings and writing exercises. 

exercise tasks, plus the production of a final 'digital epic' text.