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Stories of Buildings, Building Stories…
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'Released by Ethnoarchitecture.com' showcases personal - professional notes related to
Ethnoarch webmaster's current work. In other words, this is Ethnoarch's blog.
The section also details new content added to the site, technical improvements and, in general, how Ethnoarch.com is going.
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Stories of Buildings, Building Stories…
July 12, 2007
Ethnoarch is launching a new section, dedicated to building tales, myths, customs and beliefs from all around the world. A new story will be published each Thursday, hiding the one from the previous week. There will not be a publicly accessible archive of previously posted stories. They will "appear" and "disappear" from the Web site, as a way to suggest their magical quality.
In these stories architecture expresses itself as something beyond "shelter" or "function." Here architecture is also the reflection of "immaterial" dimensions like culture or ideology. Buildings, these stories communicate, reflect not only what we are able to accomplish, but also what we are able to imagine, dream, or even fear.
In most cases, building was not the protagonist element in the original tales, neither were these tales necessarily produced by builders, or for builders. However, upon close reading it is possible to see how they relate to building after all. In fact, in all of them building is not only part of the story, but is so important an element as to shape the story itself, either structuring the narrative or appearing in critical turning points of the narrative's drama. Since building is not only present in the narrative but actually helps "build the story," the stories have been called "stories of buildings, building stories..."
For a few years now I have been collecting these stories, which I have read or heard about. I have had the idea of editing them in a printed work that would not have any "thesis," nor would the stories try to prove any point. It would just be a collection of separate short stories about building, with the simple aim of sharing a joy of building and of tales, and of celebrating the diversity and wealth of building cultures from all around the world.
With this joy-as-goal purpose, I have thought this could become useful as introductory material for students who are either contemplating or entering an architecture-related career, or for laypersons who are acquainting themselves with vernacular architecture. In any case, these stories offer a broad perspective on architecture, beyond the paradigm of a classic first house from which all the world's buildings are derived.
While the idea of that book materializes, I will be publishing one of these stories per week here on the Web site. Jennifer Rulf will be editing the work. She and I hope that readers will enjoy these stories as much as we do.
See this week's story.
About this article
Ethnoarch is launching today a new section. From now on, the home page will greet visitors with short stories about building, coming from all around the world...
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