How does architecture make myth and myth make architecture?

Thresholds is the annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the MIT Department of Architecture, held in over 150 university art & architecture libraries around the world. Issue 45: MYTH, edited by Zachary Angles, asks: How does architecture make myth and how do myths make architecture? 

More than stories, myths explain the inexplicable, order the seemingly unordered, and make palatable the otherwise unpalatable. Myths are evidenced in and born from both narrative and seemingly non-narrative sources; they are the collective tales which order our worlds. Some are products of long histories, so entangled in our understandings they are difficult to parse. Other myths emerge as rapidly as the ascendant hero.

Glass and steel towers grew forth from Chicago and New York becoming architectural gods of prosperity and progress. Rising around the world in efforts to summon about these gods, these towers now marginalize—and make romantic—vernacular forms rendering their histories ever more mythic. They slither through the collective unconscious, construct societal visions of worlds, and speak to truth through the collective imaginary. Myths present the opportunity to expand, and link, stories to the social, cultural, and political worlds they engage.

What of rebellious reactionaries seeking to unveil myth’s operation or bias? Those who seek, or find, disenchantment? What myths spread forth from instances of rebellion, schism, or opposition? Which media, theories, or events cause myths to spread or dissipate? Where is architecture’s underworld? What myths have been woven about architectural theory and practice and why? Who are architecture’s villains and its anointed heroes? Why, and how, have histories been mythologized to justify contemporary positions or operations? How was myth and mythologizing made unacceptable by certain rises in rationalism?

With a taste for the fantastical, thresholds 45 invited submission from scholars, architects, artists, authors, and other forms of mythic content. thresholds 45: MYTH seeks to expand and nuance our understanding of how myths play into designs all around us. 

This 288 page book features peer-reviewed essays from scholars, design work, architectural representations, and pieces of original fiction. This was the first issue during thresholds' 45 issue history to be internationally published and distributed by the MIT Press.