The Fourth Wall of Architecture

Bart L. Decroos

This work is an attempt to combine the fields of architecture, critical theory, and literature. It deals with the question of how an architectural artefact develops its meaning within a larger discourse through its image, and how this relates to the everyday life of the physical space of the artefact. The work has been developed by translating certain theoretical ideas to a fictional setting in order to explore these ideas through the medium of literature. The theoretical starting point thus takes on the form of characters, dialogues, and events within a specific architectural environment in an attempt to relate these diverse ideas to one another and to the physical space. The resulting short stories have then been translated to images of physical spaces, which try to detect these theoretical ideas on the level of the space itself. The complete work comprises three short stories, each dealing with a different type of architecture: the single-family house, the hotel room, and the office space.

References

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