One Hundred Years of Solitude

New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts hosts exhibition curated by Wellington School of Architecture PhD student Luca Caiaffa

Magical-Real Courtyard is an installation composed of speculative architectural drawings that chart the fantastical and curious spaces of the famous novel by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel’s architectural setting is the Buendía house, and the in-between space of its courtyard coalesces the magical-real situations of the family.

The installation Magical-Real Courtyard re-presents this magical-real courtyard in the gallery as a large, inhabitable mapping. Visitors are invited to wander and ponder on its surface, encountering the novel’s shifting perspectives on time, space, and reality through an architectural and experimental lens. Using mapping strategies such as circular plotting, associative projection, and playful assemblage, the installation explores the intersection of magical realist literature and architectural drawing, weaving magical and real layers of the human experience within its spatial contexts. The installation is part of a PhD research project that investigates how intertextuality in architectural drawing can be developed to incorporate hidden or evasive accounts of everyday life into architectural visualisation.

Contact

luca.penteadocaiaffa@vuw.ac.nz