THE URBAN STORYTELLING COURSE
unlocks your writing and drawing skills for cultivating embodied awareness and architectural wisdom
You Will Learn How To:
- experience architecture through combined writing and drawing
- select, extract, evaluate and re-create spatial values
- imagine a transformation of a place through mixed media
- read the environment through your own spatial intelligence
- cultivate your own language of imagining places
- work with the spatial memory of emotional experience
CHOOSE YOUR WAY OF LEARNING
150 €
Self-paced
✔︎ 11 pre-recorded lessons (lifetime access)
✔︎ Downloadable worksheets for each lesson
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✔︎ BONUS: Audio recordings of all lessons
✔︎ BONUS: Access to our online Exhibition Studio community circle
✔︎ BONUS: Downloadable transcription booklet for each lesson
ENROLMENT CLOSED
Next open call:
November 2024
300 €
One-on-one personalized experience
✔︎ "Urban Storytelling" online course
✔︎ 11 weekly one on one drawing sessions with Viktorija (90 minutes)
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✔︎ BONUS: Audio recordings of all lessons
✔︎ BONUS: Access to our online Exhibition Studio community circle
✔︎ BONUS: Live online exhibition review of the works in the final 12th week of the programme
WHAT ARE THEY SAYING...
Ajda Žagar
"It is difficult to describe shortly such a deep experience like working with Viktorija. Our journey started not so long ago, and yet, it feels like we know each other since ever. In this journey, you discover you oldest companion – your own self. You learn to express, not because you must speak, to draw not because you must defend yourself. But only for the sake of pure enjoyment in exploring the world. And by discovering of the world – you enter a deeper meeting and discovery of yourself.
Viktorija introduced me to this world. She introduced language to soul and spirit. She thought me to let my hands be instruments, that do not demand systematic perfection, but yearn for leaving an imprint.
Line by line, I was slowly learning to talk to myself.
To give myself a voice.
To give myself a space.
So I was and I am discovering drawing, because it makes sense to be myself and to read the world in the way that I am reading it."
Maja Petrevska
"Working with my own personal architectural hero has been a life-changing experience. Within each one-on-one mentoring session, withing each collaborative wirting-drawing discussion, I felt like I was exploring my inner landscapes: how they reflect in my sensitive spatial explorations. I was always surprised by myself and by the new perception on space that I have developed during the session.
Viktorija has a way of guiding you back to your authentic Self by asking questions that really require some self reflection. Through the writing – drawing – speaking method, I developed a whole new perception on what architecture is or can be and how it can be interconnected with the other visual and literary arts. Through these sessions Viktorija also shows what a healthy working environment is but also what a healthy mentor – mentee dynamic is. She is encouraging, inspirational yet humble, selfless and loving and has a way of making you feel comfortable with your own vulnerability.
Through this course and while working with Viktorija, I have learned how to not be scared to make architecture personal and how to use my own voice in order to create an architecture that is in correspondence with my authentic Self. If I had the chance, I would’ve chosen Viktorija to be my mentor from my first year of architecture school till the final year of my master studies."
MEET VIKTORIJA
I am a poet and practicing architect, devoted to making, sharing and co-creating poem-drawings as processual and analytical instruments in architectural and urban research through design.
I have devoted the last 8 years of my career to discern how the intertwinement of writing and drawing techniques can enhance one's perceptiveness of the relationship between one's embodied experience and one's architectural design task. While cultivating and internationally exhibitng my own practice of design-driven poem-drawing, I deeply wished to share all that I learned through my most meaningful pedagogical encounters.
Standing against the traumatic cycle of suppressing the inner voice of the young human, I am driven by my restless desire to create a learning environment that starts from the student's conscious or unconscious gifts and affinities, from his/her inner unique personality and beauty.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Viktorija Vitanova
"Between the physical form and the experience, the emotions and the mind, the present and one’s present. Somewhere in between, the poem drawing finds place. A medium of underestimated easiness and clarity amid complexity.
A simple “why not poems for each of them?” shined a new light on the understanding of what the project was all about. Each follow-up confusion, each “stuck in my mind” and “don’t know how” from my side, was met with calmness and patient guidance by the other side.
Viktorija’s approach seems easy and effortless to be led by. Dialog, drawing, and occasional poems as a not so common medium to everyone were introduced as scriptures of one’s thoughts, and then they became habitual.
The answers are never served on a platter, the sole interaction leads the mentees to get to them on their own, to find their voice and vision and imprint it on the project. A unique form of contemplating architecture."
Monika Kodžovašieva
"I had the pleasure to meet Viktorija as a person and a mentor in a period when my life was filled with turbulence and insecurity. In the transition between adolescence and adulthood, I found my self in an egomaniacal environment with “rectilinear” perspectives. I was fighting with all my strengths to cultivate my love for design and my creativity. I was fighting for my right to belong in this completely new world.
Thanks to Viktorija and her guidance, I discovered a new human-centered way of creating, a specific humbleness and silent love for architectural design. I felt that I belonged somewhere for the first time.
She revived my desire for inner growth. She built me a safe place to develop my ideas in my own way, regardless of their unconventionality. She leaded me in a way not too understandable for me at that time, but a way necessary to awaken my inner bloom.
I am grateful for the humanity and the patience she radiated in her teaching, for her constructively beautiful and encouraging words on my work, and for her mentoring that I will hold as one of my dearest memories from my architectural studies."
