Marco Frascari's Dream House ─ A Theory of Imagination

This unpublished work is a must read for anyone who has followed Marco Frascari’s scholarship and teachings over the last three decades. It also provides the perfect introduction for anyone new to his writings. As ever, Marco does not offer prescriptive tools and frameworks to enact his theories of drawing and imagination, he teaches how to build one's own through individual practice. An illuminating introduction places Frascari’s text in a wider context, providing the reader with a fascinating and important context and understanding to this posthumous work. Marco’s sketchbooks are reproduced faithfully in full colour to provide the reader with a remarkable insight into the design process of this influential mind.

Marco Frascari was a dedicated teacher of architecture, an extraordinary storyteller and an eminent thinker and theorist of architecture. Frascari was born on March 29^th 1945 in Mantova, the city of Alberti’s Basilica of Sant’Andrea for which he later became an advisor to the committee in charge of conservation. He died in Ottawa, Canada on June 2^nd 2013. Frascari obtained his diploma at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice with the title of Professore di Disegno. He studied at the Liceo Artistico Cignaroli in Verona (1958-1962) and at the end of the four-year period he took his diploma exam in Venice.

Federica Goffi is Associate Professor (2007-present), and Associate Director, Graduate Programs at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University. She is currently teaching architectural drawing, studio, and a PhD colloquium. She has been an Assistant Professor at the Interior Architecture Department of the Rhode Island School of Design (2005-2007). She holds a PhD from the Washington-Alexandria Architectural Center, of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She has published book chapters (Routledge, Ashgate) and journal articles on the threefold nature of time-weather-tempo, as it informs notions of ‘built conservation’ (AD, ARQ, In.Form, Interstices, Int.AR). Her book ‘Time Matter[s]: Invention and Re-imagination in Built Conservation. The Unfinished Drawing and Building of St. Peter’s in the Vatican’ was published by Ashgate in 2013. She holds a ‘Dottore in Architettura’ from the University of Genoa, Italy. She is a licensed architect in her native country, Italy.