Narrative Story

The buildings, spaces and environments can also narrate a story, which depends on the observer’s interpretation of the symbols and connotations of the material which is used in the building, the shape and the space. However, the traditional conception of narrative is mostly depended on the idea of writing, or oral exercise which presents a theoretical conflict between narrative designs in architecture and the literal narrative. This contradiction, however, is not a set-back for the architecture, but a gate-away to a relatively richer and broader environment to ‘narrate’ the story. Through the process of building, the architect does not only present a space, building or a landscape, but also enables the observer to have an insight towards the existence of these architectural objects and discover a story, which is not indeed linear as in the movies or stories, but is multi-dimensional and richer. For instance; Coates (2012, p.12) underlines the fact that ‘it is buildings that need the most potent symbolic content which make the most use of narrative strategies” and offers the example of churches as the product of a architectural narrative with these following words; “[c]hurches accumulate narrative as the result of the desire to reflect the story of God in every way possible, including the configuration of the body of Christ in their plan, their decoration, painting and sculpture” (p.12). Con- sidering this idea, narrative design can be identified as an accumulated representation of the space, building and landscape, which simultaneously narrates a story, through their symbolism. Therefore, it is possible to place the observer, and the architect, as the story teller since the material existence of the buildings and spaces convey a particular set of symbols and interpretative elements which can be united in order to establish a framework for a narrative.