“If the architect now drew by hand a small, human-scaled figure tracking their progress as they move through the ground floor, first floor, second floor of the palácio, walking through the corridors and entering the rooms which I form, I would not know where I was on the plan, I would be the one who is lost.”
Resonating with our current redevelopment of the City Observatory site, Maria will make a performative reading and discuss her new book Legend of the Necessary Dreamer. The book is a novella, a prose essay and a real-time excavation of the historic, yet decaying, Palacio Pombal in Lisbon. The book was written on site during Maria’s role as writer-in-residence at the Lisbon Architecture Trienale, and has been described by Chris Kraus as “a new classic of female philosophical fiction” and by Eyal Weizman as “ a new taxonomy of site-based address.” Legend of the Necessary Dreamer is published by Vanguard Editions, London.
Maria Fusco is an interdisciplinary writer and Reader at Edinburgh College of Art. Richard Skinner is the founder of Vanguard Editions and Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy.