ABSTRACT

Confabulation is a drawing together through storytelling. Fundamental to our perception,

memory, and thought is the way we join fractured experiences to construct a

narrative. Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture weaves together poetic ideas,

objects, and events and returns you to everyday experiences of life through juxtapositions

with dreams, fantasies, and hypotheticals. It follows the intellectual and creative

framework of architectural cosmopoesis developed and practiced by the distinguished

thinker, architect, and professor Dr. Marco Frascari, who thought deeply about the

role of storytelling in architecture.

Bringing together a collection of 24 essays from a diverse and respected group of

scholars, this book presents the convergence of architecture and storytelling across a

broad temporal, geographic, and cultural range. Beginning with an introduction framing

the topic, the book is organized along a continuous thread structured around four

key areas: architecture of stories, stories of architecture, stories of theory and practice

of stories. Beautifully illustrated throughout and including a 64-page full colour section,

Confabulations is an insightful investigation into architectural narratives.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

Homo fabula

part I|42 pages

Architecture of stories

chapter 1|11 pages

Glass and clay

Proust and Gallé

chapter 3|7 pages

The “uncharted tides”

A literary map of Saint Petersburg

chapter 4|8 pages

Macaronically speaking

chapter 5|7 pages

Il Mantecato

An architectural course served at the Frascaridonosor’s Tavern of Crossed Destinies

part II|51 pages

Stories of architecture

chapter 6|9 pages

Buildings remember

chapter 7|7 pages

Object talks

Confabulation of dwelling space in the texts of Kamo no Chōmei and Wajirō Kon

chapter 8|9 pages

Suspended ceiling stories

Navigating the cosmo-technologies of hospital ceilings

chapter 11|10 pages

Architecture sub rosa

Another tell-tale detail, with confabulations and digressions

part III|66 pages

Stories of theory

chapter 13|6 pages

Walls of gender

chapter 15|10 pages

Camillo Sitte’s winged snail

Festina lente and escargot

chapter 17|9 pages

Dialetti architettonici

Storytelling in the vernacular

chapter 18|11 pages

Miming a manner of architectural theory

Eudaimonia—A Pantomime Dream Play

part IV|49 pages

Practice of stories

chapter 20|8 pages

In medias res

Michelangelo’s mural drawings at San Lorenzo

chapter 21|6 pages

The function of fiction in fabrication

Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni, the Italian confabulator

chapter 22|8 pages

The Laughing Girls