The architect as storyteller. Cedric Price and the language of experience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5821/palimpsesto.18.5678Keywords:
Benjamin, Price, discourse, journalism, proximity.Abstract
In his essay, ‘The Storyteller’, Walter Benjamin contrasts the collective assimilation of experience and memory through the tradition of storytelling to the privatised subject of bourgeois literacy and the ‘empty’ temporality of modern news. Set against the increasing ‘distance’ that mass media had opened up in the language of experience, Benjamin proposes the notion of ‘nearness’ (Nähe) as a possible strategy to recover the communal intimacy that he perceives in the narrative forms of oral culture. Following Benjamin’s analysis, this article examines the discourse of the British architect, Cedric Price (1934-2003) and more specifically his work as a journalist. Indeed, Price actively engaged architectural journalism not only in what he wrote or said, but also in the proximity that he developed toward his readers and his audience. By considering the architect journalist as a modern day ‘storyteller’, this article proposes a reflection on how architectural discourse today may engage in a more productive dialogue with professional practice and society at large.
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