José Ramón Hernández Correa Revisits Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities as an Architectural Text

On the Spanish architecture blog Verdes, José Ramón Hernández Correa reflects on Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, a work cherished by architecture students despite Calvino's lack of formal architectural training. The book features fifty-five cities named after women, such as Diomira and Isidora, along with conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Hernández Correa interprets these cities as representations of themes like old age, solitude, and memory, recommending a poetic approach to reading—one city at a time. Peruvian architect Karina Puente Frantzen provides illustrations for cities like Zaira and Despina. Hernández Correa considers the book essential for architecture students, beneficial for their projects, but ultimately describes it as an opus masturbatorium that results in mere white noise.