Fairy Tales

Here is an interview that I did, back in 2015, with the founders and directors of Blank Space:

Founded in 2013 by Matthew Hoffman and Francesca Giuliani, Blank Space conducts a unique annual competition named "Fairy Tales" and publishes books based on the results of the competitions. The way that Blank Space bridges so naturally and poetically between architecture and storytelling sheds a new light on architectural communication and expression. When I was working on NAAM #2: On the Edge of Architecture, I found it a great opportunity to interview Matthew and Francesca about Blank Space and the link that they see between fantasy and architecture.

Matthew Hoffman and Francesca Giulian. ©Blank Space

First off, please tell me more about Blank Space, What is the core idea behind it? Where was the beginning?

Matthew: Blank Space was born when two people from completely different backgrounds started having conversations. My background is in architecture, and Francesca’s is in journalism. Architecture is the slowest form of media in the world, and the world we all live in communicates at the speed of light. At the intersection between the two are meaningful conversations about where architecture is headed and how it wants to engage the general public in its concerns and objectives. We planted a stake for Blank Space at this crossroad by inviting the public to enter the architectural discourse, while encouraging architects to communicate better and be more inclusive. We’re building a bridge between both sides.

As I’ve learned, both of you are interested in communicating architecture. Do you believe that architecture – if considered as a language itself – is, alone, incapable of fully communicating itself to people? And is that one of the reasons for what you do? Also, what is the role of a communicator here?

Francesca: No language communicates itself, but in the words of Paul Watzlawick, “One cannot not communicate.” We can’t avoid being communicators, it is a role we can’t escape, and one that we need to understand to play at our best.

Not many architects fully comprehend the very nature of the language they are operating with. Alison Lurie said it very well in her book The Language of Houses: architecture is ‘spoken’ by “most designers, [...] sometimes fluently, sometimes clumsily”.

While the design process can be likened to writing a message by organizing elements of the architectural language, the non-verbal architectural message then exists in the world in the shape of inanimate objects distributed in space. Architecture speaks to those who receive it and it becomes interpreted in ways that may or may not conform to the intention of the architect. Architecture in this sense exists at the crossroad between “communication” and “signification”.

We all understand architecture, however, as it uses three-dimensional shapes, colors and textures, which speak to us more clearly and universally than verbal languages: “We may be at a loss to understand what is said in most foreign languages, but every building conveys information, though we may not understand all of it”, Lurie says.

Making architects cognizant of the underlying communicative nature of architecture is important, that’s why we decided to start hosting competitions such as “Fairy Tales”.

The ‘Fairy Tale Competition’ is more of a competition for a creative media regarding architecture rather than a simple architecture competition. Do you agree?

Francesca: It is a competition that focuses on highlighting the inherent communicative qualities of architecture, an aspect that can be internalized by designers unknowingly, but that if practiced with cognition helps make architecture accessible.

Please explain a bit about the relations between fantasy, fiction and design. For instance, do you think that Blank Space’s ‘Fairy Tale Competition’ has a practical outcome for architectural design? And how?

Francesca: These relations may not seem apparent, but they hide in plain sight in the very roots of the words we use to define all of these concepts: if we analyze them from an etymological perspective we can discover some interesting connections in meaning.

The word “Fantasy” comes from the Ancient Greek verb “Phainomai,” meaning to show, to make visible, to illustrate, to make something apparent. Design comes from the Latin “Designare,” or to mark out, to represent with a sign -- and what is that if not “making something apparent”?

Design is considered a creative act. “Fantasy” is a synonym for creativity, even though the concept of creativity developed much later, based on the Latin verb “creare,” which means to generate, to give birth to, from the sanskrit root “KAR” which has the same meaning: to make.

Fiction is a kind of making in itself (or “making up”, if you will). The word comes from the Latin “Fingere” which means to shape, to mold.

Practical comes from the Greek “Praxis,” or action, doing (the verbal form is ‘Prassein’): writing and illustrating something are prime examples of actions we put into practice to make ideas apparent, to shape our thoughts and mold them in ways that are visible to others, shareable. These very actions embody all of the concepts we covered so far: phainomai, designare, creare, prassein.

So even when an exercise in creative writing and illustration around architecture may seem detached from the ways modern architecture has come to define itself, we like the idea of tracing back to the very roots of why we design, why we communicate. We set out to experiment with formats that inspire people to go beyond the surface and forge deep connections.

The practical outcome of the competition is whatever each designer makes of it: whether the experience opens their eyes to these underlying structures of meaning and motivation, or it inspires them to be more daring in their designs, or it encourages them to be more cognizant of their messages and how to deliver them. Hopefully it’s all of the above.

©Blank Space

The format of the submissions to ‘Fairy Tale Competition’ is a set of images and a narrative text (story). Reviewing the winning submissions, the images are really fascinating, but I think the stories are even more fascinating (and the most fascinating is surely both of them together). Anyway, I want to say that the styles of the writings are indeed creative. What do you think?

Matthew: I think that there is a movement within the design profession to attach simplistic, linear stories to projects. I’ll call it the “BIG” syndrome. It goes something like this, “The initial challenge of this project was this, so we did that, and then this other thing happened, so we improved our project by doing this.”

The reality is that the creative process is hardly linear. There is a network of forces that influence any project, and it is the designer’s job to make sense of the mess and produce something that is better than the sum of its parts. Being able to communicate this process in the form of a story is at the core of the Fairy Tales competition. Each year we are completely blown away by the ways in which designers innovate through stories. We receive everything from comics, to love stories, suicide letters, manifestos, and email threads. There is a great willingness amongst the design community to tell new stories and we hope that our competitions continue to draw them out and give them the attention they deserve.

Do you believe that this could start a new way to consider for writing about ‘much more serious’ matters of architecture?

Francesca: We sure hope so! It also all depends on what we consider “serious” versus what we consider “frivolous.” What defines seriousness? Does it mean important? Does it mean realistic? Does it mean business appropriate?

An act of communication works if it delivers its message in comprehensible ways. That’s its mission, a very serious one. Not all that’s written about architecture, or in the business of architecture, is serious in this sense. One can communicate an architectural message in a style that is realistic and business appropriate and convey an illusion of importance by just being rhetorical, mimicking a style that means business, but without delivering any information. That’s frivolous.

We root for an architecture communication that checks rhetoric and empty buzzwords at the door and focuses on conveying its messages in the most open, most understandable fashion possible. Whether that happens using fiction or prose, haikus or diagrams on a PowerPoint presentation, we don’t differentiate. We take it all very seriously.

Fairy Tales. ©Blank Space

Fairy Tales ©Blank Space

Please also tell me more about the book, and the reception it got.

Matthew: We received so many amazing stories that we wanted to share them all - and we certainly wanted to package them in a way that would be more “permanent” than simply posting them online. Our goal is to go far beyond simply hosting competitions to craft conversations and debates that reach the core of the design profession. We’ve been amazed to see how far the book has gone.  Professors have used it for their classes, book clubs have studied it, and we’ve had students say it inspired their thesis. We’re deeply honored and proud of the results.

What else is Blank Space aiming to do? What’s coming next?

Matthew: Well - we have a few top secret projects that we are working on at the moment. I can say that we are planning on launching 2 all-new competitions later this year. We’re also working on a new book with our super talented friends at Bruce Mau Design, which will be the second edition of “Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells A Story”.

This Piece was originally published in NAAM #2 "On the Edge of Architecture"