Before going any further be aware that there are three types of narratives at play here. First, there is your written narrative. In workshops and classes one participant wrote a narrative of a discussion between two trees as to how they, the trees, and the healing garden in which they are situated, might provide a young, distraught woman with comfort. Another participant wrote about a hospital kitchen worker upset with his day, kicking several trash cans out of his way and stomping across the street to the healing garden. Another was a hiker in a local park coming upon an outdoor class in ecology, seeing it in the distance and slowly putting together what she was looking at as she approached it. The second form of narrative is the one participants in your design read in their surroundings as they approach, arrive at, enter into, participate in, and leave your design. It is a narrative of objects and spaces as signs and symbols built into a landscape, a building, or an interior. The third form, not used here is the form found in Landscape Narratives (Potteiger and Purinton, 1998) and Spirn’s Language of Landscape (1984). Narrative, or story, in these sources is what a history student, or longtime local resident, or specialist in some area of study brings with them. Imagine yourself arriving at Plymouth Rock. You parked downtown and found your way to the shore and the site of The Rock’s display. Upon seeing The Rock all kinds of stories you’ve heard over the years come to mind. That is the third form of narrative, and not the first or second form of narrative you read and interpreted from where you parked, walked through one or two historically distinctive neighborhoods, and down and across the road to The Rock’s site. The first- and second-person narrative you write will express the anticipated emotions and experiences your design’s participants bring with them and that unfold around them as they progress to and through your design and not the stories associated with but not seen in the place.
As for what is expressed and read as one traverses a landscape, there are three overlaying narratives to be read in a landscape. The first is the most immediate and short lived. It is the practical narrative: can I get there from here? How can I get there? Will I be safe? Once you read these messages and move on they remain behind you and are replaced by each succeeding message up ahead. The second form of narrative is that of period and place. What met your expectations or exceeded them as you walked from downtown Plymouth to the harbor was that of being a part of Colonial New England and not that of Santa Fe, NM, New Orleans, or the Art Deco of Miami, Florida. The third level of message is the most subtle and yet enduring and deeply moving. It deals with the stories, morals, and meaning of archetypes and the collective unconscious we assimilate over the years. Consider Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in terms of each level of narrative: Yes I can see where I am going and that I will be safe; this is a very solemn place; and I see my refection in the names of all who died for me.
Potteiger, M. and Purinton, J. 1998. Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Spirn, A. 1998. The Language of Landscape. New Haven, CT.: Yale University.