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MONU #29 ON NARRATIVE URBANISM RELEASED

2018-10-15T14:56:00-04:00

To create a better general culture of understanding around architecture, urban design and urban development issues, we need to use all of the narrative tools that we have at our disposal, claims Cassim Shepard in the interview we did with him entitled "Understanding Urban Narratives: What Cannot be Measured" for this new issue of MONU, "Narrative Urbanism".

“To create a better general culture of understanding around architecture, urban design and urban development issues, we need to use all of the narrative tools that we have at our disposal, claimsCassim Shepardin the interview we did with him entitled“Understanding Urban Narratives: What Cannot be Measured”for this new issue ofMONU,“Narrative Urbanism”.Being a filmmaker, he points out that moving images in this day and age are particularly effective forms of communication as they have the capacity to make people want to engage. For him, filmmaking is a very useful process that taught him how to talk to people, how to listen to people, how to observe spaces critically and with an open mind, in order to understand the unique urban dynamics that make every space special and worthy of care. Without that extra attention many things in our cities can simply be forgotten.

With his contribution“Les Grands Ensembles”– a video still of a film depicting model replicas of two modernist high rise...

New Call for Submissions for MONU #29 - Narrative Urbanism

2018-05-02T13:21:00-04:00

One important outcome of our last MONU issue #28 on "Client-shaped Urbanism" was the realization that in order to create better cities, we need to improve the communication among everybody involved in the creation of cities, whether they are clients, developers, municipalities, architects, urban designers, or the users of cities, to name just a few. Especially for architects and urban designers, one way to make themselves understood better, is to use the power of "narratives", helping them to connect not only to experts and intellectuals in the field, but to everybody else too. To find out what such urban and architectural narratives might look like today - and what they were like in the past - how they can be crafted, where they may be used and how narratives can help improving our cities in general is one of the main aims of the upcoming issue of MONU that we call "Narrative Urbanism".

In the history of human civilisation, narratives and storytelling have always been an importa...

Contemplating film and architecture at FXFOWLE's "Urban Narratives" panel

2014-11-26T20:54:00-05:00

Los Angeles – FXFOWLE Architects celebrated the release of their new monograph last Thursday night with "Urban Narratives", a panel discussion on, perhaps surprisingly, storytelling. Currently, the trope of describing design disciplines, and many forms of marketing and new media, in terms of "narratives" and "stories" has become quite pronounced (sometimes derisively so). But as set pieces on the world stage, architecture holds great sway in determining whatever "urban narratives" arise. To the panelists, composed of professors and practitioners in both film and architecture, architecture's kindred narrative art is naturally film, as they are both time-based media, and visually oriented. The discussion turned to how architectural design can be used as elements in city storytelling, and in turn, how film can tell that story with architecture.

Moderated by University of Virginia architecture professor (and former dean) Kim Tanzer, the panel was populated by Edward Dimendberg (professor...