Place-based storytelling: from abstracting morphological forms to perceiving and narrating everyday life

Abstract

This paper describes a practice-based experiment undertaken in the context of the author’s practice as a consultant urban designer which aimed to assemble an ideation tool to aid urban designers in the perception of the everyday life of a place. The hypothesis of the experiment was that by seeing and thinking about place in the ideation phase of a project as a space where everyday life unfolds rather than an architectural phenomenon and spatial system, new modes of designing may emerge. Although not easy, this paper argues that such a reframing is necessary in order to make urban design relevant to the needs of contemporary societies.

By assembling a technique of understanding place inspired by psychogeography, the experiment found that the relationship between urban design practice and non-fiction narrative art is close enough that particular ways of walking and filming might be useful for urban designers to deliberately shift ways of seeing to transform ways of thinking. The experiment suggests that a form of ambulatory discourse and film might assist to establish a critical and speculative mindset and posture that enables new ways of describing social and cultural realities of everyday life that might be termed ‘knowing a place’. By problematising, provoking dialogue and holding back from the act of re-making, this way of knowing holds the potential to open up the space between ‘perceiving place’ and ‘designing into place’, allowing new modes of designing to emerge.