Established in the Latin action word ‘narrare’, an account arranges occasions of a genuine or anecdotal nature into a succession related by the ‘storyteller’. Portrayal shapes and improves on occasions into a succession that can animate the creative mind, and with its arrangement comes the chance of the story being retold – verbally, pictorially, or spatially. In engineering, the linearity of the account work breaks up as the spatial measurement meddles with time. Inside the structure of these spatial calculations, stories can draw in with the mechanism of room and structure, the premise on which design can be given importance.
Space and storytelling are two terms that are not only different in their presence but also have a strong physical statement that allows us to feel it. Concerning space, the stories are the values and emotions developed by the usage and the activities that promote it. The trajectory generated by the intersection of two physically different terms sets multiple forms of connections in terms of the narration’s plots, foreground and background and the quality of human and non-human.
Layers in Architecture
The function of architecture is to create an intangible layer of oneself. The metaphors of materiality represent the structuring of life and the layers that build up for it. The buildings enable us to understand the flow of movement and help us understand the permanence of life. Space, as a storyteller, not only generates and directs to specific moments when it manifests the layers of life within it. In its representation, architecture beholds the power of permanence and a recollection of the stages of life connected with it. The values generated by the intersection of space and architecture reveal the dynamism of self-identity born by the physical dimension we are surrounded by.
Architecture not only has a dimension that helps us reside but also portrays the society we live in. With the rise in modernism, the nature of the spaces evolved, but the importance of culture stayed. At the source, architecture was a way of portraying power and the development of civilization. The metaphor built up by comparing the human self to the architecture brings out a more extensive conversation of how a user or a designer perceives their space. The reflection of one’s self in space and the space in oneself brings out the nature of the stories of settling into a world constantly on the move.
More than Architecture
We all tell stories, either to believe it or not, to express, to learn about something, and to understand something. According to (Sharr,2012b),” An Architectural good-life can be built, explained, and taught only through storytelling. Spaces have their way of telling the stories of natural ageing, the part where the humans take over and vandalize it. Space and architecture do not tell the stories they intended to. The connection of the storytelling also depends on the way of construction, the usability, the past experiences, programmatical development of the site, and many more. The tangible factors such as scale, material, openings, and intangible ones such as light, wind, smell, and taste create a more significant trajectory to work upon when space itself starts revealing itself.
The intersection of reality and fiction combined to create a programmatical analysis for the storyline of a building. The emergence of space allows a human to narrate the dramas of the past and present. Architecture is a conceptual object that we move through that describes the activities and defines a discipline for it. For example, a museum can stay steady wherein the humans tend to go in the flow by activating the spaces and transforming them by addressing time. The value of the sculptures and the objects and stories behind them portray themselves because of the conceptual strategy of its placement and in connection with the context.
Fictionalizing the Function
The intersection of two distinct values, reality and story, brings out permeability between the language of the spaces and the context it is placed in. There came tales, fables, and superstitions far before the context came in. No matter what space, there has always been a story that has developed the architecture or has backed up the architecture which led to the city’s development. Architecture is a study that involves a system wherein images start getting in your mind, a storyline that builds up. When executed, the storyline builds up around it. The intersection of storytelling and architecture brings out a plot of people involved in making things complete. It makes a meaningful whole out of the parts, making it humane and allowing it to breathe.
Fiction generates a story around a plot that is not real. Fictionalizing the function of architecture makes a user sense the plot going on around. Depending on the human psyche, the sense or the feeling may or may not be positive. Though covered or not, compact or wide open, every space around has its own story or a plot to narrate. A motive is to make the users in it feel the conventional home or the intangible peace.
References
Chiesa, L. (2016). Space as Storyteller: Spatial Jumps in Architecture, Critical Theory, and Literature (Illustrated ed.). Northwestern University Press.
Emmons, P., Feuerstein, M. F., & Dayer, C. (2017). Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315573359
Sharr, A. (2012b, March 15). Reading Architecture and Culture: Adam Sharr. By Book-2-Look International. https://www.book2look.com/embed/9781135725884
- (2018, October 22). Narrative (1): From Storytelling to Spatial Practice. Architecture: MArch Studio at Northumbria University. https://performing-architecture.com/2018/10/22/narrative-from-storytelling-to-spatial-practice/
- Castelvecchio Museum_The museum recovery of the east wing. (online). Available at: https://www.bricolofalsarella.it/it/opere-selezionate/costruzioni/castelvecchio-museum/ (Accessed Date: 18 June 2021)
