Utilizing narrative as an architectural design approach

This thesis proposes a new spatial thinking and architectural design approach for architecture students, using narrative. The base of the narrative that time and space serve the storyline of the character is reconstructed in a way to prioritize spatial production. The sub-components of narrative and visualization tools are also the main instruments of this new architectural design method. The conventional design methods in architectural education and the correlation between design tools and representation are explained in the first part of the thesis. Then, the relationship between narrative and architecture is discussed mutually and a broad theoretical background is established. In the "space in narrative" chapter, the representations of architecural space in literary and visual narrative forms are explained through different examples. "Narrative in space" chapter discusses the conceptualizations of different designers and theorists about narrative in physical space. After mentioning about other studies in the literature that utilize narrative for architectural design, the proposed approach is discussed in the last section. "The Space of Narrative" exercise, which aims to make students design using literary and graphic narrative, is explained in this section and evaluations are made on the final products of the study. Data on how to develop the proposed approach in the future are also obtained from these products.