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The book Landscape Architecture as Storytelling goes into more detail on design approach ideas and realizations than provided in these 38 installments: understanding design features, spaces, and sequences of spaces as the expression of messages, determining your design’s users’ reasons for and expectations when visiting your design, and the history and value of storyboarding, and…

Our exploration of Landscape as Storytelling brings us to a number of conclusions. First and foremost is that “People Come First.” Well, Simonds would likely say “people’s experiences come first.” Following that thinking here, once you’ve developed a written narrative, turned it into a storyboard reflecting the narrative’s content, flow, and continuity, you can then…

I once had the opportunity to design the backyard of a condominium built into a slope. What with the downward slope from front to back of the condo, visitors would be greeted at the front door, then go downstairs to sliding glass doors and out to the rear yard. As an alternative, visitors might walk…

Some of you may have already questioned and played with just the how a landscape narrative unfolds. When I say “landscape narrative unfolds” I refer to the sequence of  messages as one moves through a series of landscape spaces. Just to be sure, here are a number of considerations: how a landscape narrative is read…

A final note, regarding things to be aware of when making a combined narrative-storyboard presentation as a means of expressing your design. Such presentations are extremely powerful. Unlike many design presentations comprised of design jargon and the language of geometry, your written narrative is a presentation of design participants’ experiences. As such, your client readily…

In their presentations, designers, especially as students, often say things like “I wanted,” “I liked,” “I decided,” “I picked this and put it here.” As a result, they are questioned about “their” selections, “their” decisions, and “their” placement of things. As a result, it is very easy for them to take a client’s or teacher’s…