VOLUME 03:

echoes

VORKURS: echoes was initially inspired by Charles Baudelaire's poem, in French titled "Correspondances," which appeared in his controversial book of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal, published in 1857. It is an example of poetry's grounding and ineffable ability to describe our experiences, often more accurately than a descriptive text. As a reaction to the rapidly industrializing urban conditions of Paris in the 19th century, the collection of poems offers an evocative parallel to our current conditions and reactions to how we inhabit and sense our urban and rural environments.

An echo is a close parallel to an idea, feeling, or event. VORKURS: echoes provides a framework for writers to inspect how the context of architectural discourse may reframe and examine those parallels through space, time, and the senses. In homage to what Baudelaire describes as the "fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis and art’s responsibility to capture that experience,’’1 VORKURS: echoes confronts our place at the intersection of nature and culture, and considers how our human qualities, histories, and interconnectivities can offer new understandings in how we form our experience.

Reverberations of the past, and prospects of the future lie in these remaining pages, and offer a place for reflection.

With that, we extend to you l’invitation au voyage.

-Elizabeth Carmody

Executive Editor

1 Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne. (London: Phaidon, 1964)