In 1931, architect Ivan Il’ic Leonidov was sent 2,800 kilometers northeast of Moscow to assist in constructing the new Soviet arctic port of Igarka. The city stood in the traditional territory of speakers of the indigenous language of Ket. Today spoken fluently by fewer than twenty people, the language isolate offers a grammatical model of reality unrelated to Indo-European language structures. By employing the Ket language as a medium of academic architectural discussion, this text creates an encounter between Leonidov’s fantastical architectural drawings and native Ket speaker and linguist Dr. Zoâ Vasil’evna Maksunova to pose hybridization, fiction-making and translation as means of performing research. The work’s graphical elements and lyrical prose challenge conventional ways in which the history and knowledge of architecture are constructed.
245 pages | 8 color plates, 46 halftones, 5 line drawings | 6 1/2 x 9 3/4
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Architecture: Architecture--Criticism, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Architecture
Sociology: Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology

Table of Contents
or
An Experimental Investigation in the Construction of F(r)ictions
or
A Provoked Collision of Ivan Leonidov and ðe Ket Language
or
The People of the Light and the City of the Sun
or
A Tale of Loss and Divers
Extracts
The City of the Sun
LES VIDES
Orthographies
Orientations
Oðerwheres
Standings
LES SAUTS
Phora
or, imperfective projections of perfective worlds
Canting Caritive
or, revolutions around silence
Divers
or, a fable and a stance (in lieu of a conclusion);
a plea for ðe architectural epic
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