Paracosmic Project: The Architectural Long Game

• Published in: Architectural design 2021-05, Vol.91 (3), p.120-127
• Main Author: Morris, Mark
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 4 Cities and Beyond; Alpine Architecture; Angria; Another World; Archigram; Architecture; Arizona; Augustus Welby Pugin; Austin Tappan Wright; A‐City; Bodys Isek Kingelez; Broadacre City; Brontë siblings; Bruno Taut; Catholicism; Centre Pompidou; Centricity; Charles Barry; Cicero; Contrasts: Or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages and Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day; Cornelis Cort; Creativity Research Journal; CS Lewis; Dante; Douglas Adams; Ejuxria; Extreme Models; Frances Yates; Frank Lloyd Wright; Gondal; Hartley Coleridge; Houses of Parliament; Imagination; Industrial Revolution; Islandia; Jane Eyre; JJ Grandville; Joanne Greenberg; John Elsner; Kingdom of Yr; La Ville du Futur; Le Corbusier; Lebbeus Woods; Lincoln's Inn Fields; Literature; London; MacArthur Fellows; Michelle Root‐Bernstein; Michigan State University; Muhammad Abd‐al‐Rahman Barker; Narnia; New York City; Planetary Bridges; Region M; Research Institute for Experimental Architecture; Simonides of Ceos; Sir John Soane; Subjectivity; Taliesin; Tenant of Wildfell Hall; The Art of Memory; The Complete Works of Béranger; The Cycle of the Vicissitudes of Human Affairs; The Disappearing City; The Good God; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Triumph of the World; True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture; Tékumel; Ville Contemporaine; Ville Fantôme; Walking City; Westminster; Wisconsin; Wuthering Heights; ‘Dreamlands’ exhibition
• ISSN: 0003-8504; 1554-2769
• DOI: 10.1002/ad.2701

The notion of the ‘paracosm’ is a useful one for architects to understand. Some of the best writers and designers often work within personal, modelled imaginary worlds, sometimes constructed over decades, enabling them to give birth to their narrative scenarios and spaces. Here, Guest‐Editor Mark Morris looks at various literary and architectural paracosmic precedents.