Here-after City

Abstract

The essay theorises the relationship between narratives and the city by referring to the dimension of time and its relation with the space, searching for the relevance of urban narratives within the contemporary architectural debate. As crucial and founding elements of the urban space, narratives are able to underline a complex notion of time, characterized by the overlap of fictional and historical facts, collective and individual perceptions. Thus, from the interplay between the singular identity of the city and the multiple subjectivisations produced by their inhabitants, to the co-existence of myth and history, narratives settle an immaterial place, perceivable through the tangible entity of architecture. By adopting the term paratopia (literally from the ancient greek ‘a place beyond’), the paper objectifies the identity of the city, addressing it as a complementary context shaped both in the spatial and time dimension: the space through which cities come to life. While contemporary cities’ narratives seem distrusting the immaterial place of narratives in favour of a more scientific and parametric perspective, the relevance of paratopia must be reconsidered. Since the most important cities of history adopted myths for shaping the history behind the foundations of the urban space, this imaginary spatio-temporal intersection might come back at the center of urban debates, becoming a chance to reconsider the role of ‘epic’ within the urban identity.