Poems In Space: “Au de Cologne/Sour Theater”

Engaging the masterclass “Eau de Cologne/sour theater” that took place in a recent master-level studio-course of architecture, this paper examines the role of poetry in exploring the stories of a place and in building students’ capacity for storytelling. The masterclass, which lasted for ten days, is titled after a line from Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist poem “Proclamation without Pretention,”[i] chosen to draw attention to the sense of smell in space. Indeed, the students employed poetry to address an element rarely addressed in architectural education: smells and olfactory atmospheres. [...]