Venice is the ultimate hip-hop city. Sophia Psarra shows us how Italo Calvino sampled the lagoon city repeatedly in his 1972 book Invisible Cities. Marco Polo becomes a kind of medieval Kanye West as he creates new cities out of an old one (Venice) in the stories he spun for Kublai Khan. Calvino (one of the most creative minds of the twentieth century, as noted by Psarra) creates a hip-hop montage of Venice and a series of new urban spaces which help to redefine the architectural profession by reconfiguring space in ways that the architect never originally intended or even imagined.
Hip-hop music is spontaneous, anthropomorphic, palimpsestic, and counter-cultural. So is Venice. And it is this version of Venice, with its multiple variations, which Psarra's book explores. Everybody describes Venice in a different way – seeing different things. And, as she notes, it is important to disentangle the city from its representations (p. 15). Venice has been involved in the invention of its own mythology (p. 12) since its ingenious beginnings built upon wood pilings. And the author shows us how this takes place (by word of mouth, in image and text), beginning with a study of the Renaissance-era city and continuing in the work of writers such as Goethe, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann and Henry James (p. 12).
As she notes, Venice is a prototypical city (p. vii). It is both a non-typical (built as a cluster of islands in a lagoon) and paradigmatic city (p. 5) – in how it deploys image and myth and provokes imaginative engagement (p. 4). Her book explores the space between architecture and the city – the ‘irregular urban fabric’ (p. 10) which is ‘ordinary’ (p. 11). It is worth close analysis (which the author performs) to understand the link between the ‘spatial, political and social’ (p. 23). As such, the book is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in any city.
Psarra begins with an understanding of Venice – how it was created, its institutional makeup, and its importance as a Renaissance city. This historical overview is tremendously useful. Then the ‘cosmopolitan, working city’ (p. v) is explored in an attempt to understand social inequality (p. 3). As we all know, architecture has long been dominated by the white elite. Venice shows how the city is regained by and for other classes. The architecture of inequality becomes something more – architecture for minorities.
Labyrinthine decay can become an important space. Architectural and urban historians need to acknowledge that authored buildings exist in an authorless city (p. 15). Architecture is a product of design. But the city changes over long periods of time, evolving due to the efforts of multiple constituents. There is a multiplicity of visions (p. 4). In this context the city is cooperative and not competitive.
It is the process of urban development that is important. And in this process the city becomes palimpsestic. Ordinary, leftover spaces in Venice show us how something can be made out of nothing. Pedestrian walkways, connections between buildings and little piazzas, become important. In this way, Psarra shows us that there is a new way of engaging a building. Venice not only ‘stimulates invention’ (p. 7) and ‘provokes imaginative engagement’ (p. 4) but also represents a kind of freestyle city. As such, the city sustains a ‘multiplicity of visions and systems of reality’ (p. 4). Sometimes, those visions reach deep into the past (p. 133), sometimes the centralised city and its concomitant imagery inform us about urban spaces (p. 134). The book's very title reminds us of the city's multivalence.
Like hip-hop, Calvino's invisible cities are just that – invisible. And it is this very invisibility that forces the reader (or listener) to rely on other senses – thus making urban history a multi-sensory experience (p. 149), or one centered in the mind (p. 161). Hip-hop music is also famously informal. Not surprisingly, Venice's spaces are decentralised. This is another way in which the city becomes a perfect hip-hop city.
If Le Corbusier designed a programme for (as Psarra notes) ‘one of the most sensitive contexts of our time’ (p. 177), we need to wonder how one of the most formal architects of the twentieth century did this. Have we been going about studying Le Corbusier in the wrong way? His proposed (but unbuilt) hospital for Venice was designed to change over time. This meant that process rather than aesthetic formalism was paramount. As the author shows, the building also imitated, or was in dialogue with the city, with rooms and hallways mimicking calli and piazze. As we know, hip-hop is controlled by forces present within the culture in which it occurs and the same is true of Le Corbusier's hospital.
Like a good album, the book is well designed and appealing. The cover is terrific and the pages are filled with compelling illustrations – many in colour – and many useful maps, charts, and plans by the author.
After reading the book, the lasting questions are several. How might we practice architectural history differently? Are there new or different questions we should be asking? Could we, as historians, learn from Venice and be more cooperative and less competitive? Can we riff on other forms of history? Could we avoid formal determinants? Could the historian focus on process rather than authorship or individual buildings? Could the historian study change over time rather than original intent or appearance? Venice was renowned for its minority and immigrant communities. Because of that, we have to wonder if there are lessons in this for other cities. Similarly, Venice encourages writing the senses back into architectural history. The city can be smelly, loud, and tactile. Does architectural history in Venice allow us to explore other cities differently? The book shows us the value of doing diachronic history. We see how useful it is to learn about twentieth-century architecture along with Renaissance spaces. Similarly, we see the value in a truly multi-disciplinary history in which Calvino and Le Corbusier are on equal footing. In all of this, we must wonder how history can be more creative and provocative. As Psarra shows, there is a lot we can learn from Venice.
