Luca Caiaffa

Magical-Real Drawing: Speculative Architectural Cartographies of One Hundred Years of Solitude

The architectural settings of Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realist novel, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' are narrated in assemblages of actual, concrete realities and magical events that capture the fleeting, temporal, uncanny, multiple and shifting dimensions of lived experiences of place. In his creative-practices PhD research on speculative architectural drawing, Luca searches for a magical-real drawing practice able to grasp the complexity and richness of place found in the seminal Colombian novel. The research aims to tackle the necessity and difficulty of architecturally mapping such evasive and subjective dimensions that are nonetheless vital to engage with the heterogeneous, culturally rich, and transformative identities of places.

Luca is a registered architect and urbanist in Brazil (CAU/SP) with over nine years of professional experience across residential and public projects. Currently, he works as an architectural designer at Stevens Lawson Architects, in Auckland. Luca is primarily interested in designs that engage with complex cultural and physical dynamics through material, technical, and aesthetic expression. From 2021 to 2023, Luca worked as a tutor for Research Methodologies and Design Studios and served as a guest critic for Masters presentations at Victoria University of Wellington.

Supervisors

Professor Daniel Brown and Associate Professor Simon Twose

Publications

Caiaffa, Luca. 'Magical-Real Table: Sitting In-Between One Hundred Years of Solitude and the Left Bank Laneway'. Architectural Installation at the Left Bank Laneway, Wellington, New Zealand, 1 June, 2024.

Caiaffa, Luca. 'Magical-Real Courtyard: Architectural Mappings of One Hundred Years of Solitude'. Speculative Drawing Exhibition at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, New Zealand, 3-19 March, 2023.

Awards

2023, Selected as a Finalist for the Premio Félix Candela V competition
2022, Honourable mention in open architectural competition for the new UERGS campus in São Chico, Brazil.

Contact

luca.penteadocaiaffa@vuw.ac.nz