Seeing Fire - Seeing Meadows

This book 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.

Anna Kostreva is an artist and architect based in Berlin, Germany, and in Bristol, UK. Since 2019, I have been working on this book as 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?