ABSTRACT
Ecem Sarıçayır’s chapter treats the implications of the omnipresent architecture and the orientalist setting of the book from the perspective of an architectural historian, contextualising the fantastic architectures in Invisible Cities through their historical and geographical situatedness (or seeming lack thereof). Adopting Esra Akcan’s notion of open architecture, Sarıçayır shows how Calvino’s book invites readers and inhabitants of the cities to co-construct them, whereby the open author-reader relationship is mirrored by the inhabitants’ shaping and reshaping of the described cities. Comparing Calvino’s city descriptions with practices of open architecture of the time, Sarıçayır stresses how they share a preoccupation with the way in which the material aspects of open architecture are inextricably bound up with (and thus ought to be studied through the lens of) the social and political dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that are an intrinsic part of (city) life. In spite of the inclusion of the reader and the invitation to the inhabitants of the city to help shape the urban form, Calvino’s use of orientalist tropes somewhat limits the openness of the cities in the book.
