Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto
Author: Cruz Garcia
Co-Author: Nathalie Frankowski
Published: Rotterdam: NAI010 Publishers, 2020

What do the ideal cities of Le Corbusier, New Babylon of Constant, the first enclosed shopping mall, Brasilia, and Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York have in common? Is there a form of architecture devised to reveal the ideology hidden behind the design of buildings and entire cities? Is there a form of critical storytelling in architecture?

In the form of a Kynical Manifesto (a manifesto that bites), in Narrative Architecture Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski reconstruct six decades of the twentieth century to reveal the origins of one of the most powerful, misunderstood, and underutilized mediums of architectural critique, thinking, and representation.

Narrative Architecture reveals a stream of remarkable architectural and urban visions in the twentieth century that culminated in the construction of one of the most powerful, misunderstood and underutilized media of architectural and urban critique, thinking and representation.

This historical genealogy in three parts weaves inseparable modern architecture and narrative critique through never before seen images of half a century of utopian, heroic, commercial, ironic and critical projects by Le Corbusier, Team 10, Constant, Victor Gruen, Yona Friedman, Archizoom, Superstudio and Rem Koolhaas.

Alluding to Diogenes, the ancient kynic who wandered with a lantern in search of an honest man, through narrative, archival and provocative images and texts, the book lays the groundwork in search of an honest architecture able to question the pressing challenges of our times.

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