VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
A city is a story, built, read, and continuously reinterpreted. Urban morphology actively produces narrative genres, positioning the city as a generative agent rather than a passive backdrop. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad (1991) and Jacques Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible” (2004), this paper examines how spatial configurations shape what can be perceived, experienced, and narrated. Focusing on Bath, the paper analyses the city’s representation across two temporal-registers: Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817), and the contemporary film adaptation Persuasion (2022). Austen frames Bath as a space of social regulation and performative visibility; the cinematic reinterpretation reconfigures the same urban-fabric as an affective and experiential landscape. This temporal gap makes Bath an ideal case for demonstrating how urban morphology remains stable while its narrative affordances evolve, shaped by shifting cultural and perceptual regimes. Through textual-spatial analysis, the paper shows how Bath’s Georgian-fabric, its axial organisation, controlled façades, and performative public interiors, functions as a narrative infrastructure structuring social interaction and literary development. The city operates as a spatial script, producing genres centred on visibility, class, and performance. The paper conceptualises the built environment as an active site of spatial knowledge production, where readers construct speculative spatial experiences extending beyond the material city. These imagined-geographies shape perceptions of place prior to and through physical encounter, revealing the reciprocal relationship between architecture, narrative, and lived experience. The findings will benefit architects, urban designers, novelists, and screenwriters alike, illuminating how morphological literacy can become a design tool, one that harnesses the generative power of architectural narrative to inform speculative urban futures.
Wafaa Mustafa is an architecture PhD student whose work sits at the intersection of spatial politics and urban theories. Holding a BSc in Architectural Engineering from the UAE and an MA in Spatial Design Practices from the University of Portsmouth, her doctoral research examines how architectural elements and urban fabric produce spatial affordances that shape human behaviour, using literary fiction as a methodological lens to read the city. Her practice combines analytical thinking with creative exploration, positioning architecture as both a functional discipline and a storytelling medium.
Prof Oren Lieberman is Professor of Architecture at the University of Portsmouth with degrees in philosophy/psychology and architecture. His practice spans teaching, researching, writing, and curating. His research explores performative practices entangling architecture, performance, philosophy, geography, anthropology, and sociology, focusing on posthuman aesthetics and more-than-human assemblages in architectural production, examining political practices, critical pedagogies, and ethical world-making through post-qualitative methodologies.
Dr Eiman Elbanhawy is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Portsmouth. Her research spans urban resilience, mobility-justice, coastal heritage, and Global South urbanism, with sustained engagement across Cairo, Alexandria, and the UK. She has contributed to research circles across five HE institutions, bridging scholarship between the Global North and South. She leads the UDUM Lab (Urban Diagnostics, Urgencies and Mobilities Lab), supervising doctoral-researchers across spatial justice, heritage, mobility, and inclusive design. She is the PI on WASILA grant application, examining mobility equity across Cairo, as well as on the AHRC-project application COHERE on coastal living heritage resilience in both Globals.
Dr Mitchell’s work explores drawing as a critical and gendered means of understanding interior space. Her research involves interdisciplinary processes, her current work engages with Wymering Manor, a 16th century house in Cosham, where she has developed experimental heritage practices to represent the intangible qualities of historic settings. Recent publications include: Mitchell, B (2025) Drawing Conversations 5: What and Where is Home? Burgoyne, G. & Journeaux, J. (eds.). University of the Creative Arts; Ecologies of Care: drawing//cleaning, (2024), Taylor Francis Online; Drawing IN: Bodies in Motion (2022) Remote Practices, Architecture at a Distance, Crucible USA.
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Tuesday 7th July, 2026