Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows
Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows is a novel that foregrounds architecture into storytelling. Natalie, an architect, describes the city of Berlin governed by algorithms where human participation is rewarded with creature comforts as well as ecstatic experiences. She and her friend Winter, a daring software programmer, begin to have doubts about how to direct their own lives amidst these accelerating control mechanisms. They start to dissect their digital and physical realities and, eventually, Winter resolves to test these limits no matter the cost. Along the way, they encounter humans, software, and architecture that challenge their perspectives and the stability of the world they live in.
Longlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction ‘24.
“An enjoyable—and very intriguing—book, which examines important questions in dramatic ways that keep one ever curious as to what will happen next!”
—Niall Hobhouse, Founder of Drawing Matter
“One shouldn't expect architectural fantasies to be optimistic any more than a novel should be. But even if the interweaving of narrative and design does not point to any simple way out of the dilemmas of our time—the author is too intelligent and too incorruptible for that—it does allow us to wander between different worlds within and around us, worlds which can no longer be divided into the binaries of reality and dream, analogue and digital, inner world and outer world.”
—Holger Kleine, Artist, Architect, and Professor of Interior Architecture, Hochschule RheinMain.
See the full featured commentary on Drawing Matter.
“The hand drawings of fictional places with poetic names (Monument to Rejecting Exploitation, Silent Retreat, Cemetery of the Digital Individual) immediately reminded me of John Hejduk, as well as Raimund Abraham, Lebbeus Woods, Douglas Darden, and other architects whose ideas, and drawings of them, far outnumbered their actual buildings. Some of them are mentioned in the book, no doubt reflecting Kostreva’s education at Cooper Union, whose hallways and studios are looked over by the ghosts of Hejduk, Abraham, Woods, and Diane Lewis.
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Ultimately, Kostreva’s book of words and drawings tackles issues that are played out in the interaction between the physical and the virtual. Today’s surveillance capitalism and social inequality, for instance, are taken to an high level in the book, with “basic subs users” able to traverse small stretches of the city compared to “elite subs users,” who have more of the city at their disposal. I can’t help but think back to the 1990s, when the internet was a place of freedom, untouched by capitalism—the opposite of what it is today. In Kostreva’s “archifiction,” the internet-spawned subs “serve an economic system that protects social hierarchy above all else” and “will be the new invisible hand.” As such, Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows is clearly more dystopian than utopian, but it does offer hope in the characters that inhabit it and in the places they imagine.”
—John Hill, Architect, editor at World-Architects, NYC tour guide and author of 7 books
See the full review on Archidose.
“Kostreva takes on the end game of tech as the fascinating thought experiment of Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows, stretching the efficiency of the ‘subs’—apps designed to instruct and direct people—to a far limit. She sets up characters who put a human face to tech companies, explaining the operations of the fictional-yet-imaginable startup silentia in a relatable and urgent way. Other characters take ideological positions in this alternate reality of Berlin, effectively discussing social and political issues like economic, wealth, and time inequality. At the same time, Kostreva has included her own fantastic architectural drawings of the real and surreal places in the novel, inspiring the reader to think about what spaces become likely, possible, and necessary in a dark future defined by the increasing digitization of human life.”
—Anita Iannacchione, Editor
Bookstore Distribution:
Berlin:
Proqm
Hopscotch
Bücherbogen
Ocelot
b_books
Curious Fox
WaltherKönig
Book Nook
London:
Serpentine Gallery
ICA
Tenderbooks
South London Gallery
Pages of Hackney
Donlon Books
Whitechapel
Peckahm Books
Bristol:
Story Smith
Arnolfini
Online:
Waterstones
Abe Books
Amazon
…
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Published by Plural Studio, 2023
www.plural-studio.net
Size: 240 x 165 x 14mm
Content: 160 pages with reproductions of 44 hand drafted images
Paper: 140 gsm, offset print
Cover: hot press white foil graphics on blue 250gsm card with folded wings
Edition: 500 copies
Text and images © Anna Kostreva 2023
Advisor: Alex Head
Editing: Samuel Walsh
Graphic Design: Alix Bouteleux
Proof Reading: Marc Hiatt
Printing: Janet 45 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Anna Kostreva is an artist and architect based in Berlin, Germany. This book is a tool to think through what we as individuals, collectives, creative people, artists and architects are faced with. What does it mean to narrate stories about ethics and agency in the present moment? What architecture can facilitate change? Which aspects of the past century need to be left behind?