Ting Yang

From a Novel to a House

My project is motivated by my interest in narrative. I am curious about what architecture can learn from literature.

I chose Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s detective short story, In A Grove, as the base narrative structure. This novel consists of seven chapters. Each chapter is a monologue of one character, which is independent from the others. There are contradictions among their statements and the truth remains unclear to readers.

Being Inspired by such a narrative structure, I designed a house, which accommodates a writer and an architect. I turned the house 90° (vertical-horizontal) to realise two perspectives. I wonder: can people live in different ways in the same house? In one perspective, two inhabitants meet with each other; in another perspective, they do not. From one perspective to another, I reshape the inhabitants’ life. 

Goal/Ambition

It is quite evident that space matters in architecture while time matters in literature. In the process of working on my graduation project, I have been searching for inspirations from literature. I have tried to discover new insights into architecture through the lens of literature.

Indeed, architecture has become different when I applied a literature structure to it. For the two protagonists in my project, I present two ways of living in their house: one is living separately and another is living interactively. How can these two modes be possible in the same house? What I did is changing the perspective by turning the house.

Turning the house – it sounds only workable in fictions. In fictionalising a house with multi-perspectives, I realised that the same spatial structure has different temporal dimensions. Two modes of living cannot happen at the same point of time. But it could be realised at different points of time. Additionally, architecture seems like a template with multi-perspectives. It determines, to a certain extent, how we spend our time throughout the days.

In the future, I would like to continue exploring the potential of narrative in architecture. I hope that, through my project, people will realize that how to look at architecture is as important as what it is.

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