Category: A 50-year Journey to Discover a Fun, Comfortable Way to Learn Landscape Architectural Design

The narrowing of what can be selected from for inclusion in a narrative , and as a result a design, is what Goodman (1954) refers to as “probability” and Pouillon calls “contingency” (Chatman, 1980, 47). Both concepts help us understand the reduced availability of words or objects to be employed in writing a story or…

Identifying a design’s theme and determining the activities to be sequenced from first impression tolasting impression is a filter rarely discussed among design students and practitioners. There are designprojects students are given that focus on empathy. Students are usually given an emotion, told toempathize with it, and then turn it into either an abstract design…

While Rae uses her characters to guide her narrative’s development. Lamott focuses on writing. Many designers will identify with Lamott’s admission to the difficulties they face starting a narrative. She makes clear that your first draft can be a “shitty first draft” and that no one will see it so write whatever feels good at…

It is easy to imagine, many designers as well as students muttering, “Oh crap! I have to write a short story.” Keep in mind, writers are as mystified by what designers do as designers are of what writers do. Like most mysteries, each is a point of view waiting to be clarified. There are writers…

Imagine you’ve taken on a project. A neighborhood council asked that you daylight a stream buried 70 years ago. As social values swing back and forth, the stream once running free, was then contained in a culvert, and now, once again, exposed to the daylight has you answering the three forms of narrative. The practical…

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…

If you’ve followed my journey thus far, or better yet actually played with the ideas presented in the previous posts on doing design based on how you learned to read, write, and tell stories, then you are ready for the next phase, how we take what we’re learning and apply it in a process that…

At some point in your exploration of this thought-provoking analogy you’re bound to wonder about themes and first impressions. How do you deliver a theme. How do you introduce a first impression. I love Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Landscape Garden” as an analogy for both design characteristics: delivering a first impression and a theme. I…

My “discovery” of narrative opened a whole new approach to my understanding of design. While narrative is an entire study unto itself (Chatman, 1980; Aminzadeh et al., 2016), we can, with exploratory studies in sketch books, self-reflective thinking, and critical discussions among groups of students, faculty and practitioners shine a light on our tacit, subconscious,…

Before we get into the next phase of Landscape Architecture as Storytelling design process I want to return to my journey. I was so excited with what I was learning by playing with The Analogy; so excited I wanted to share it with other design students and instructors. I got the chance. I shared The…