"Setting the Scene" - In Conversation with the writer Lucy André.

Recently, I had the honour of reading some work by Lucy André - wonderful drafts from  a new book she is currently working on. Apart from the riveting events described in her book, it is the power of the evocative language that Lucy uses to set her scenes, landscapes, and spaces that transforms the reader into a different reality - that of her thoughts and memories.

"He invites me into his house to show me how he built it with his bare hands. The central stairs are constructed with massive beams of wood as if the brute materials were hauled out of the forest. The house is indestructible, but strangely the stairs, the floor and the walls are lined with green linoleum, as if one might need to hose the place down, to disinfect it after a riot." Extract from autobiographical writings by Lucy André

Whilst reading through the pages, it made me ponder, how the author’s view or perception of architecture and interiors is so close to that of an architect’s in the moments when we visualise the spaces, the way we perceive them or design,  how we walk through and experience them in our minds before presenting to our Client.

Do authors view these spaces they so eloquently describe as creators or are these inevitably echoes of their own experiences and memories? If  the use of language by great authors, without the support of an illustration, allows your mind to experience places and time, and makes you feel in a certain way as a reaction, one must not underestimate the power of built and realised projects and environments, and what they do to our perception, albeit at times we do not allow sufficient time to pause and understand them, as we would when experiencing places in a book.

Does architecture set a scene for actions to come, or help to build up characters, just as a wonderful book does? We all know, interiors and architecture absolutely do affect our psyche. By being aware of this, perhaps some minor changes could make a difference to our health and wellbeing. For each of us- it might have a different meaning. The psychology of space, or how one uses and thrives in their home or what makes their home theirs, is something not to be taken too lightly, and not something that can be prescribed without nurturing the concept and allowing designs to develop. Whilst we create for the real life characters, we know that the environment will have an affect of their behaviours and state of mind.

In the author’s mind, does the character come before the architectural space and shapes it, or vice versa? If the places already exist, one still has a choice of what to emphasize in the setting of scenes. Much like designers, writers create moments and pauses that will play a part in their clients’ everyday lives.

 We have asked Lucy André to share her thoughts on the subject:

'The architecture of a room, a place, a memory is important whether writing fiction, memoir or a film script. Just as one can tell the era of a photograph by its particular colour and framing, in the written word the description of light can set the time, season, mood and culture.

 If one looks at the paintings of Edward Hopper for instance, the light and contrasting shadows reflected in his interiors can only come from the wide horizons of America, even his night pictures give an impression of an immense, dark sky pressing down. The colour and light in Constable's landscapes are identifiably English, with the glimmering intensity of after-the-rain prisms.

When describing an interior one hopes to capture the place and season of the world outside. Using shadows, objects and reflected light within the room, you can at the same time indicate the inner mood of the person or people. Memoir is difficult because one's own memory fills in the detail, you know where you were at the time, therefore an accidental gap in description can leave the reader confused. My son recently read the opening scene of my current writing, in which I wanted to convey the place: Russia, the season: Winter; and the visual relation to 1960's Russian films which were my own reference to that immense country. I am describing observing a scene unfold at a women's prison.

     "We cannot tell whether you are within the prison walls or outside them?" He criticised and resorted to googling the place on google maps to prove me right or wrong. I had missed a simple and obvious sentence while writing, because in my head I was there.

Our lives and experiences are lived in many architecturally different spaces and we retain a certain nostalgia for past places, even recreating them subconsciously in our dreams. I have observed, when visiting people's homes, that either they contain objects and pictures that carry past memories, or else they have created a new, simple environment in which they imagine a life-style that is representative of their individuality. Designing spaces, or writing about spaces, which have alcoves and angles where objects can sit and throw shadows of identity and history, enables a continuum of the before and after of who we are.

The buildings that have influenced my own spaces, are the painter Katya Serebriakova's studio in Paris, the dancer Sylvie Guillem's house Villa Guillem in Italy and Jean Jacques Rousseau's house, Les Charmettes in Chambery, France.'