Sensuous Architecture Writing



with 
 Ella Felber  

#writingexperiments #constructingtexts #findingyourvoice


ChatGPT can perfectly write a generic architecture description with all the hollow buzz words. We don’t need to do that ourselves anymore. Yay! So now, we are given extra time. We could use it for writing, still, and digging beyond the conceptual, and into the messy, layered peculiarities of spatial experiences.

In this workshop we take time to write, and to edit. We explore poetic practices engaging with the complex lived experience of places, and translate them into texts. Writing methods and exercises support us to get there. (Yes, writing is not a matter of genius!) We observe our surroundings, describe atmospheres and sensations. In close readings of selected texts, we examine how they create spatiality through vocabulary, rhythm and punctuation, as well as syntax and typesetting. We analyse how these literary devices allow the readers to move through spatial sequences. Continually, we translate our findings in notes, written sketches and texts. In collective feedback sessions, we strengthen each others’ voices and texts. And then we edit, re-write, typeset, edit, repeat.

The workshop is a playground to experiment with various perspectives and genres (flash fiction, poetry, essay, and hybrid forms), steering towards spatial experiences in your texts. The goal is not to write a ‘perfect’ text, but to find your own writing voice, and learn how to use it as a tool for your own practice, for research, reflection or your design process. The outcome will be a shared, accumulated anthology, and a collective reading of your sensuous architecture texts.


Ella Felber writes, researches and educates in the expanded field of architecture. Here, she develops places and spatial dramaturgies: in workshops, exhibitions, interviews, readings and books. Her first book ‘Unter der Hohen Brücke’ (2021), and other architecture and literary texts were published in magazines and anthologies, and shared in public readings. She initiated and curated the collectively developed exhibition zkmb: ‘Zwischen Kostenschätzung, Muttermilch und Bauwende’. In 2024, she received a Margarete-Schütte-Lihotzky grant for architecture research for ‘Mourning Spaces’.
Ella graduated in architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, studied spatial design at KADK Copenhagen, and performative arts in Vienna and Copenhagen. She is a regular participant at the text feedback series Gläserne Texte. Currently, she researches and edits a publication on the transformation of Carina, a therapeutic centre for addiction in Feldkirch (AT). She is a lecturer for writing design methods at NDU St. Pölten and TU Graz.
 https://ellafelber.eu/


︎︎︎ MEDIA  text (writing, reading, observing, editing, typesetting)

︎︎︎ LOCATION Main location

︎︎︎ TEACHING LANGUAGE English

︎︎︎ WHAT TO BRING paper, a pen you can comfortably write with, laptop

︎︎︎ REQUIREMENTS  interest in language and writing, no previous experience necessary

︎︎︎ MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS  6

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