POETRY IN ARCHITECTURE

Reading a city as if it was poetry is a creative way to understand the architecture of the city, rather than simply categorising buildings into different types of architecture. Poetry can be divided into three major types; Lyric Poetry, Narrative Poetry, and Dramatic Poetry. In the case of cities, it is easier to understand a city when it is designed in a certain type of architecture rather than having a mix. Although not every city follows this rule, hence why most people consider that they get can lost in cities that have a mix of modern and ancient architecture. The purpose of this project is to analyse the main details of the Nolli’s map to prove that you can read a city as if it was poetry. In the drawings study I analysed the grid, forms, shapes and void, and the relationships between the buildings and the main roads.

“Why would architects fantasize a totally different city only fifty years after the nineteenth-century rebuilding of the European cities with a totally different strategy - monumental boulevards defined by street walls cut through the medieval fabric?”

-The City as the Object of Architecture

Gandelsonas 1988

The final piece is an exploration of the heart in the map. I see the Nolli’s map as the cardiovascular system, each part contains a mix of garments but yet they are all very different and original. Each building is considered to be an important piece to a much larger system. I have combined the model of the heart to my portrait because I believe we can only ready architecture as a piece of art such as poetry if we feel and see it with the heart and not just the brain.

"Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise."

-Adolf Loos, 1900