Enactments

A story isn’t just actions of characters, causes and consequences. In a novel for instance, there is an intricate maze of layers of time, narrative points of view with their circles of consciousness and shifts, a psychic distance between a narrator and their characters, the internal and the external. When seamlessly pulled together, all of these techniques become invisible and a story comes to the fore. In a similar way to a city or building, we enter a world constructed for us without questioning the height of a ceiling in a foyer or the width of an underpass. We inhabit the space created; we accept the construct that makes us move in a certain way, see a particular vista, become alert, relaxed or uncomfortable.

Architects and urban planners enjoy finding inspiration in fictional works. In reading, watching, hearing fiction, ‘city-makers’ have found distraction and enjoyment, hopes and utopia, but also apparent repulsion via dystopian depictions of the city. At times, the relationship between fictional imagery, architectural renderings and their subsequent realisations is so confusing that it becomes difficult to realise who influenced who. Who can say if the streets of Osaka influenced Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) or if the reverse is true? Or maybe both. It is said Los Angeles’ planners built their vision on science fiction and found in this alternative reality the confidence to raze parts of the city down, and design it anew. And what to make of this new debate on architectural renderings, visual fictions now so realistic that they’re accused of distorting the reality of what an architect can actually achieve.