This document discusses using narrative space design concepts and storytelling as a design strategy for public spaces and environments. It proposes gathering stories from local users to inform design and using storytelling to prototype services. The concept design process involves identifying spatial elements and human actions through observation, then transforming experiences into spatial patterns through diagrams, sketches and models. The goal is to reflect local identity and inspire through aesthetic quality. Spatial patterns are analyzed through basic elements, grids, and routes to explore relationships between space and movement. The final outcomes aim to structure spaces as narrative sites transformed through sequences of user movement.

1. NARRATIVE SPACE DESIGN
CONCEPT
Central South University
Art And Architecture School
Urban And Rural Planning Department
Prepared by
Dhahir A. Taha (代海尔)
Submitted to
Professor zhang nan (张楠 老师)
3rd June 2016
中南大学

2. CONTENTS
• Narrative Space Design Concept .
• Storytelling As Design Strategy.
• Formulations To Guide The Concept Design.
• Holistic Thinking And Design.
• Transforming The Experience Into Spatial Patterns.
• Transforming the experience into spatial patterns (starting Process).
• Final outcomes. Narration.
 Space.
 Storytelling.
 Stories In Design.

3. NARRATION
Narrative is present in every age,
in every place, in every society.
… Narrative is international,
transhistorical, transcultural.
it is simply there, like life itself.
Roland Barthes [1966]

4. NARRATION
In 1981W.J.T. Mitchell proclaimed a narrative turn in the
humanities in general.
In 1994 David Maines pledged to develop a narrative
sociology.
By 2000, narration was already an entry in a social
psychology handbook.

5. NARRATION
And in 2004 Berger and Quinney published a
comprehensive study of the topic.
“ Some observers speak of a narrative turn during
the 1990s in sociology “
Too, while in 2005 Goodsell still found it
necessary to defend narrative in sociology

6. SPACE
The present epoch will perhaps be
above all the epoch of space.
Michel Foucault, Of Other
Spaces50
Space is a practiced place.
Michel de Certeau, Th e
Practice of Everyday Life51

7. SPACE
• space is one of the key dimensions in which human activity takes place.
• In geometry, space can be described with coordinates; in other disciplines,
descriptions are more contingent.
• Earlier geographers, partly relying on physical and mathematical
methodology, concerned themselves mostly with the description of
concrete physical space.
• Culture was thought of as bound to geography, bound to space, and not
bound to social or political phenomena.

8. STORYTELLING
• From time immemorial, humans beings have lived for and with myths, fairy tales and
legends – communicated at first through an oral tradition as well as through images and,
subsequently, through the written word.
• Through telling stories individuals create meaning in their lives and make sense of the
world.
• People use them to understand themselves and communicate who they are, by sharing
stories of personal experiences.
• individuals can better understand the conflicts of their daily live and find explanations for
them.
(Fog et al 2005)

9. STORIES IN DESIGN
 Stories have moved from caves to campfires, to library floors to, become a
“communication tool” embraced by corporate leaders, gurus of knowledge
man ag eme n t, and now, p r actitio n er s o f str ateg y and d esign .
(Sametz and Maydoney 2003)
 Stories are part of what is means to be human, they are a natural way to share,
communicate and understand different types of information and experiences

10. NARRATIVE SPACE DESIGN CONCEPT
stories and storytelling approaches as a tool and strategy for designing public places,
environments and services.
According to Kevin Lynch (1981) the diversity and authenticity of a city emerges from
narratives of history and personal memories.
Thus, stories and storytelling can help to shape the quality of urban experiences while
creating a sense of place

11. STORYTELLING AS DESIGN STRATEGY
As the starting points for experimenting with storytelling we had identified three reasons for
considering stories in design.
 First:- stories are gathered from users to inform and inspire design,(Mattelmäki et al 2010) .
 Second:- storytelling is used for prototyping services. It is used as means to formulate design
drivers that facilitate the style and overall design of a service system (Keinonen 2000).
 Third:- storytelling supports creating and managing contexts in which experiences happen. It
is a tool to differentiate from other similar services.

12. FORMULATIONS TO GUIDE THE CONCEPT
DESIGN
1) To gather stories about the local identity to influence design and storytelling, and
furthermore, investigate the experiential aspects of public spaces as described by the
local people to uncover the local identity.
2) To investigate what elements in public spaces can be influenced by storytelling and,
what existing and potential design elements and their connections to the stories are?
This task was approached from service design point-of-view that looks holistically
different elements that create the service experience and service as a process and a
system.
3) To create and communicate concept ideas that reflects the local identity. We aim at
solutions that inspire, that are of aesthetic quality and that support good life.

13. HOLISTIC THINKING AND DESIGN
Planner should consider all the aspects of the offering and try to project them to their
clients and beneficial in an accurate and consistent way (this called holistic thinking).
[Fog et al (2005) state, that a company truly applies holistic thinking, when the narrative
and values of the core story are shared and made visible in all the environments regardless
of the context ]
Planning get information about a Project Design from different sources: the Internet,
newspapers, television commercials, through local people (beneficial), or through friends
and colleagues, previous research and article …etc.

14. TRANSFORMING THE EXPERIENCE INTO
SPATIAL PATTERNS
 what means? It’s a process we set up not just to express existing knowledge but to think
through it and find ways to translating observed situations and abstract ideas into material
products.
How to do? the individual urban routes is a key issue which links the theoretical approach
to spatial understanding.
Which tools are used? Diagrams, sketches, models, photographs and montage are
techniques used not just to envisage the urban narratives but to reveal and organize spatial
properties and surveyed movements.

15. Cities as coded coded for narratives of discovery

16. TRANSFORMING THE EXPERIENCE INTO
SPATIAL PATTERNS (STARTING PROCESS)
First : The spatial elements inventory.
 Urban planner begin with walking in specific urban areas trying to establish an
inventory of spatial elements.
Some of spatial elements:
[ enclosures, openings, boundaries, thresholds, edges, passages, landmarks, nature fractures,
…etc. ]
Urban planner use mainly photographs to identify and present the elements they choose.
Additionally they use sketches or plans as a way to isolate the elements they focus on.

17. basic elements of the inventory
 Urban Planner has
analyzed the relative
position of the elements.
 This analysis has led her
into the creation of grid
variation.

18. TRANSFORMING THE EXPERIENCE INTO
SPATIAL PATTERNS (STARTING PROCESS)
Second: The human action inventory.
 It aims to facilitate Urban Planner to understand the crucial relation between the human body and space.
Some of Human body attitude corresponding to Space :
Urban Planner: 1- watch people walking, sitting, exchanging, dancing, waiting, constructing , …etc
2- asked the people to analyse both the variations of the actions.
 Urban planner Tools:
1- Photographic shots remain the basic tool for representing their selections.
2-Additionally they use plans and small abstract models to represent the relation between spatial
elements and actions observed.

19. Photographic shots represent the relation
between spatial elements and actions observed

20. Maps and abstract models of
walking people relate the
action to the space where the
action has been observed

21. TRANSFORMING THE EXPERIENCE INTO
SPATIAL PATTERNS (STARTING PROCESS)
Third: The route :
This phase aims at exploring a variation of actions within space, It introduces the notion of
narrative as a continuation of movement in space, which contains episodes .
 Urban planner are encouraged to experience the city as framings of space and succession of
sites organized as shots from different viewpoints.
[Exploring the city as a flaneur, acquiring the role of a thief who seeks hiding places, assuming the role of a tourist
trying to establish the identity of the city, … etc ]
 Urban planner Tools:
First photographs and maps are used to describe the crucial points of the narrative. Then
diagrams and abstract models are employed to define spatial elements and actions observed.

23. FINAL OUTCOMES
• Seen in this way, Urban Planner and the city reveal their ties. In both cases relations are
established between places and events that form and transform the spatial narratives (of
the city or of the building).
• An Urban Planner structure (as the city) becomes imaged as narrative as sites are
transformed by the sequence of movements of its traveller – dweller.
• In this sense the idea of “Urban Planner programme” is extended to include all kinds of
spatial practices.
• Activities and functions, rhythms of movement, explorations, points of view generated
along the moving inhabitant’s route, are all-important programmatic elements.

24. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION