Invisible Cities is poem to the city as Calvino sees it, more natural and reflective of nature and psychology rather than finance and technology. It is a space which the reader must enter, wander round, maybe loose his way in, and then eventually find an exit, or perhaps even several exits, or maybe a way of breaking out on his own.Ĭalvino definitely tries to address the modern city today, introducing the mega cities of the present today also at the end of the book. It needed a beginning and end and although not with a traditional plot He wrote the cities over a great deal of time, the cities were written like individual poems often reflecting the mood he was in then.Īll these cities did not make a book by themselves. Italo Calvino gave a lecture to the students of the Graduate writing division at Columbia University on Main which he talked about the writing of Invisible Cities. He is well known for playing with the narrative structure of his books and was associated with varies intellectual groups like the Structuralists and Oulipo that used maths as constraints to provoke and create meaning. After the war he graduated and became a much published and translated journalist and author. He went into hiding rather than join the fascist military of Benito Mussolini and later joined the underground resistance in WWII. Italo Calvino born in Cuba but his Italian parents moved back with him when he was 2 years old. The structure of the book in fact, is an integral part of the beauty of its beauty. This I feel is really important because of the way the book was written. A post modern novel with little plot and seemingly a much more poetic dreamlike quality.īut on starting to read and being drawn into the novel I think it becomes apparent why this has become such a touchstone for creative thinking about design and cities and why many architects love it so much, me included.īefore the review I will give some background and have a more detailed look at the structure of the book. It’s a staple for architecture students and architects alike, but why is it so popular and what’s so interesting about it? After all it may not seem on first sight to be particularly relevant to the practice of architecture as although it proports to be about cities it’s actually a magical realist book whose cities are dreamlike creations. The Book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a classic modernist novel yet has had a widespread popularity that elevates it above most books of its type and has come to have an enduring influence among artists and architects.
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