IMAGINARY CITIES by Darran Anderson (Influx Press, 2015)
This eloquent, ambitious, challenging and, ultimately, fascinating book was conceived in part as “a diminished non-fiction mirror” of Italo Calvino’s Le Città Invisibili (Invisible Cities).
Darran Anderson‘s guiding principle is that cities should not be defined solely in terms of its built environments but ought to be seen as states of mind which can, and should, be read : “Architecture is not simply the construction of buildings; it is the construction of space, both inner and outer”.
He asserts that “a history of ever-changing cities, whether real or unreal, must also be a history of the imagination”, adding that “the boundary between ‘real life’ architectural settings and fiction has been an intriguingly porous one”.
Whatever can be imagined can be re-imagined and cities change and evolve according to fashions and fetishes of the people. Architecture is influenced by culture and vice versa; art and life are not separate things but are indelibly linked.
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Dark times require dark heroes and villains.
