Listening to a panel of critics discuss the state of interior design writing, Martin Pedersen, editor of Metropolis, an architecture and design magazine, heard something that grabbed him: "Novelists may have more to say about architectural space than anyone."
He couldn't have agreed more. The January issue of Metropolis will feature eight prominent authors who have each written a short story about a particular architectural space. The writers are Kurt Andersen, Yxta Maya Murray, John Hockenberry, Rick Moody, Thomas Beller, Bruce Sterling, Karrie Jacobs and Karen E. Steen.
"For a long time we've thought that novelists have done the best writing about architectural interiors," said Pedersen.
After his modest epiphany, Pedersen began approaching writers with the idea and visited a variety of sites in New York City and elsewhere looking for venues to suggest to the writers. Each author was assigned a space and asked to create a fictional narrative using the architecture as the central element.
Among the stories are "New Right Now" by Kurt Andersen, set in lower Manhattan in 1850 at the A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Store at 290 Broadway. In "Church of the Baggy Pants," Rick Moody chronicles the transformation of an abandoned church in Cincinnati into an Urban Outfitters store.
