Losing the Plot: Architecture and Narrativity in Fin-de-Siècle Media Cultures

Losing the Plot investigates the role of the term plot in mediating relations between architecture and narrativity. Examining organisational strategies in the creation of real and virtual spaces, it identifies literary works by novelties who have resisted, or subverted, plot conventions in fiction (Joris-Karl Huysmans, Edmond de Goncourt, Xavier de Maistre and Neal Stephenson), and introduces architectural spaces such as Thomas Edioson's film-studio Black Maria, and the non-narrative productions of early cinematography, to juxtapose concepts of plot and spatiality in a study of the production and consumption of pre-digital virtual spaces. The refusal of narrative plot deprives the reader of causality, but emphasises the fictitious spatial creation in which the reader becomes immersed.