American Corner Innsbruck
The Architectural Turn in Contemporary Literature
Monday, May 18, 10.15 am, HS 3, Humanities Building
Professor David Spurr of the University of Geneva held a talk on "The Architectural Turn in Contemporary Literature" on Monday, May 18, 2015, as part of a university lecture on American Literature and Culture for an audience of about 25. Prof. Spurr argued that literature in Europe and North America has manifested a preoccupation with the newly globalized built environment of the 21st century in recent years. The built environment, in his view, is both the scene of an ontological drift and the concretization of an absence of metaphysical value. He described how architecture had always had a basis in philosophy and literature. Nowadays some people argue that these ties don’t exist anymore. However, Spurr showed that architecture is still closely related to consumerism, for example in the relationship between usability for maximum visual impact. He also showed how the marginal stance of literature toward architecture has enabled writers to take up a critical stance toward the way our world is literally taking form.
