Nature plays a key role in many of the cities that Marco describes, at times dictating with a certain omnipotence the very functioning of architecture and the behavior of its inhabitants. So, for each city, after the fundamental information given in precise words, he followed up with a mute commentary, holding up his hands, palms out, or backs, or sideways, in straight or oblique movements, spasmodic or slow.Īrchitecture’s Reliance On Nature’s Omnipotence Marco himself resorts to a more abstract identification of cities, providing genuine translation not possible through the specificity of visual wordplay. Though architecture is fundamentally a visual field and medium, it is important to allow for an unintentional evolution of meaning and understanding through one’s own sensory experiences, as a result of a slightly passive hand of the architect. Polo describes the city of Tamara, laden with signs of all sorts, where “the eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things.” This is telling of our current over reliance on distinct symbolic communication, and a reduction of the image to encompass certain connotations. Yet, the impact of this highly visual culture seems to go unnoticed at times. And yet each piece of information about a place recalled to the emperor’s mind that first gesture or object which Marco has designated the place.
Now his accounts were the most precise and detailed that the Great Khan could wish and there was no question or curiosity which they did not satisfy.
This demonstrates our inherent reliance on specific imagery to create understanding a facet that is an integral part of architecture. Throughout the narrative, 55 versions of city life are described with enthralling character, the first of which is Diomira, “a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crows each morning on the tower.” Details such as these constitute the overall visual communication between Marco Polo and us, as we assume the role of Kublai Khan, contributing to the successful creation of fictional cities through typologies and artifacts. Much of Invisible Cities’ charm can be attributed to the specificity of its writing, and as a result, its narration. Visual Specificity As A Cultural Language
With this in mind, here are three of many such principles, as revealed by the layered narrative of I nvisible Cities.
And while the book doesn’t specifically fit the bill in terms of conventional architectural writing, it resists an overall categorisation at all, instead superseding the distillation of the cities it contains into distinct boundaries and purposes.įor though there is a certain kind of sensory appeal that is captured in the details of places, the real beauty of Invisible Cities lies in the masking of underlying notions of time, identity and language within these details – a feat that is skillfully accomplished by both Marco and Calvino. For many of us, Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel reserves a dear place in our libraries, architectural or otherwise, for its vivid recollections of cities and their curiosities, courtesy of a certain Marco Polo as he narrates to Kublai Khan.
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