ARCHITECTURAL TALES

by Dominic Stevens

ISBN 978 1910140 482    80 pages (paperback)    20 x 15 cm    37 illus 

Architectural Tales is a collection of unpredictable stories about people and the buildings they live in by the award-winning architect and writer Dominic Stevens.

Can you fall in love with a building? Can the spirit of the architect haunt a building? Will your ‘perfect house’ really make you happy? The book takes the form of a series of letters from "Alice" to the author, exploring the architect's responsibility to the users of their buildings.

Tender yet unsentimental, personal yet universal, Architectural Tales is for anyone who is intrigued by the buildings around them and who loves a good story.

"What impresses about these pieces is the marriage of an authoritative architectural eye with a lively imagination."                   

  — David Butler, author

“These are stories that are at once playful and deeply serious – an intriguing and original collection from a writer to watch."           

  — Kevin Barry, author 

"...this slim volume of not-at-all-slight tales is a true work of art."

— Estelle Birdy, Sunday Independent (24.11.2024)

"Intriguing. These clever tales made me view buildings in a whole new light."

— Sue Leonard, Irish Examiner (30.10.2024)

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EXTRACT

"The group of men look at me. Sullen, they hold cans of cheap-looking beer, casually enjoying my discomfort at being observed. How can they stand it? The heat, I mean.
          Blinking. My eye is stinging as I try to rub the sweat from my forehead. I can’t function beyond my constant search for shade and my longing for a cool breeze.
My thoughts are scrambled. Brain matter frying in fatty tissues heated by my burnt skull. I have to think, and to think I need peace, but the heat is everywhere, all around, ceaseless. Now I’m walking, well, half-running trying to keep my grubby bare feet from the scorching, tacky cobble-lock pavement. I hate these pedestrian zones of German towns; shops won’t let the likes of me in. It must be cool in the frozen goods section though.
          Running, but not knowing to where. It had been days and days like this, and nights. The nights in my tent on the scrubby edge of these towns were the worst, with the sun-tortured ground emitting dead heat.
          I know when we had first arrived to look for work it had been curiously peaceful in these rough, misshapen places, these rusted hulks held between three muscular rivers – the Ruhr, the Rhine and the Emscher. These places that survived on memories of their heyday, back when coal and steel were king.
         I missed him. Yes, there had been a him; we had been travelling together. Lying awake last night, I tried to picture Karl, tried to conjure him up, tried to feel as if he was lying beside me in the dark. I couldn’t because of the sweat dripping off me, because of my hot, airless, shallow breathing. Had he been here when the heatwave had started? I can’t recall. I can’t recall because I can’t focus.
          Running, but not knowing to where. I come upon it, in a quiet suburban street. Perhaps I had seen the tower in the distance, hazy in the heat like a mirage; perhaps I hadn’t. A step back from the street, yet embedded in a city block I am suddenly confronted with brick and with good dense shadow.

— from "Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, Gelsenkirchen"
     

published 2024