World Book Day at Open City
But there is something particularly detailed, sometimes even intimate, when reading what someone has written about our urban landscape. When reading someone else’s perspective on the world, we are relying on the writer's words to craft the image and its intricacies. And so, in celebration of World Book Day, we asked some of the Open City team and friends to share texts or books they feel are were exemplary in their architectural writing.
George Kafka who organised the Open House Worldwide Festival 2020 recommends “Across Latin America in search of New Architecture”, by Justin McGuirk. From half-built and adaptable housing, to squatted skyscrapers, George recommends this one because it frames architecture in broad terms and alongside ideals of innovation and community.
The Architecture Foundation’s Rosie Gibbs Stevenson has a range of wonderful recommendations starting with David Gentleman’s ‘London’. An illustrated book depicting London scenes, it is a very gentle way of easing you into stopping and admiring the city’s vistas, corners, streets and space.
Rosie’s next recommendation is ‘Project Interrupted’, published by the Architecture Foundation. This book is made up for five transcribed and edited lectures by some of the most influential and innovative housing architects, including Neave Brown and Farshid Moussavi. If you are a fan of Open City’s housing tours, this book is a fantastic next step.
Open City Films Curator, Nyima Murry’s selection for this reading list is the article A New World Through My Window. Written at the beginning of the pandemic last year, this article still resonates as it confronts questions of equality, borders and who is left out of our cities as they ‘progress’ and grow.
Hafsa Adan, Open City Curator, offers this reading list the option of both a fiction and a non-fiction. Her fiction suggestion is The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon. This book is a moving account of arriving in London in the 1950s from the West Indies and works to illustrate experiences of a city from the everyday immigrant experience. Hafsa’s next recommendation is ‘Culture and Imperialism’ by Edward Said. This book takes a scrupulous look at culture as an active tool in the imperialist quest and we challenge our readers to interpret how architecture might be a part of this syndicate.
Accelerate tutor, Elliot Nash, suggests ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Cavino. This book is praised for striking an ethereal balance between poetry and prose, and is a great example of writing to conjure images that tap into our shared imagination of places.
Jon Astbury, Friends Manager at Open City and Curator at the Barbican recommends Matrix's 1984 book Making Space. He says:
“The image on the cover of Making Space, depicting a woman struggling alone with a pram up the steps of Aldgate tube, encapsulates its core argument; that most cities – often designed by white, non-disabled men – are built on problematic assumptions about everyone else, chief among them women and children. The Matrix Feminist Design Cooperative sought to challenge this. Be it the treatment of women in the architectural profession or how communities and clients can be involved with their cities in a collaborative way, much of what the cooperative was challenging remains depressingly familiar to this day, making this book's message all the more urgent”
And last but certainly not least is our teams recommendation as whole: The Alternative Guide to the London Borough. This book was created by the Open City team, guest-edited by Owen Hatherley and make up of essays by thirty-three writers; architects, activists, and Londoners present thirty-three essays exploring famous and unheralded buildings, streets, estates and neighbourhoods across the thirty-three London boroughs. If you’re not quite sure, listen to our interview with Owen on The Open City Podcast.