Today, we are happy to bring you our conversation with Andreea Mihalache, author of Boredom and the Architectural Imagination: Rudofsky, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steinberg

What inspired you to write this book? 

With current technologies that allow for quick physical making along with quick dissemination of images, there is a fascination with and a constant search for the new, the extravagant, the extraordinary. Architecture is one aspect of a broader condition of our culture, hence the choice of the four protagonists, all trained as architects, but engaging in different cultural realms. When we qualify an architecture as “boring,” we typically imagine banal and monotonous spatial and aesthetic features. However, I’m looking at this sense of discontent from a temporal perspective. Simply put, we get bored in an environment that delivers itself immediately without building the anticipation and expectation of discovery. But what if boredom became a tool of contemplation that informed architectural imagination in unexpected ways?

What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book? 

I became curious about boredom and architecture thanks to a little book called A Journey around My Room, written in 1794 by Xavier de Maistre who was confined to his room for 42 days in the aftermath of an illegal duel. While I wasn’t even sure that I had a research topic, gradually, and to my own surprise, I discovered the field of boredom studies that covers philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, visual arts, to name just a few. It was as if I put on special glasses that allowed me to discover this topic in the most unexpected places. I realized that architects have been talking about boredom, and that time is a critical, yet overlooked, aspect of it. I hope the readers will have the patience to slow down and appreciate another perspective on an often-disregarded mood that is hiding in plain sight.

What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book? 

How thinking about boredom gave me new tools to reflect on the commodification of architecture and our society of consumption.

What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?

In the course of my research, I had some of the most serendipitous experiences. I still remember requesting a certain book from the library and receiving instead Rudofsky’s Behind the Picture Window. Flipping through it, I found the chapter “On Boredom and Disprivacy.” Which opened up a completely new line of research and became integral to my project. Other unanticipated discoveries happened searching through the Saul Steinberg Papers at the Beinecke Library and finding the artist’s handwritten notes and thoughts about boredom, which prompted a new angle of looking at his drawings.

What’s next? 

As I’m writing this piece, we are expecting the arrival of our second child. Everything else has become secondary.