Narratives

A good friend, giving a talk to students about narrative in design, asked me to contribute to his presentation. What follows is a note based on a lesson we attended together during studies.

How’s it, cousin? Happy to do this for you, though, here I am scraping the precipice of the void created by deadlines! I’m claiming time-zones as the reason. But you just woke up?

Teach your listeners to anticipate deadlines. Real talk.

This will take the form of an open-ended question, really.

Narrative can only, generally, be perceived and taken on board if people can create a link to it themselves. The same is true for education, but that’s another topic. The ‘story’ of a building is one of the great challenges in architecture.

I think back to my own time in university, when, with the head up in the clouds, the games of narrative and representation in architecture were in full swing. Getting into it with a lecturer at that time; how do you really perceive the story of a disaster, say, through built architecture? In this particular dialogue, this I was made to understand it could be boiled down to two modes: put a person in tight space to tell of the experience of being in a tight space, or, put a 10-foot-tall image of a disaster in front of the viewer’s face.

Which is more intelligible? Which will the building user take onboard? An arbitrary question, that is probably informed by the tendencies of the loudest generation.

…Please just be sure to include a ‘no photography’ sticker in your building signage package. We do not need another photo in a photo (in a photo) …well, until we do.

Taken another way, the importance and effect of the visual arts, graphics, lettering, and sure, signs, is very much up to the conviction of the hands that include them. Elsewhere, that fire extinguisher sign you don’t want to think about might save a life, or ten. These are functional items that aid navigation. Please let it be known that ‘forgetting’ about life safety is the same as rude and harmful dismissiveness. Make no mistake, there is a tremendous amount of responsibility involved in being a competent architect.

…

Once upon a time in China, I had befriended the manager-barista at the corner coffee shop. She was looking for a phrase to include along with their new interior design, to put on the wall. Something catchy, coffee-related, or fun, or romantic. Something with some meaning. What a great notion I thought, and quickly cut up some paper to write down several small ideas. I reviewed them with those around me, a straightforward American, and another South African, who loved this coffee shop very much, and we three eventually settled on two:

‘I’ll meet you at the corner, in the coffee shop.” Simple sounding, absolutely, corny, sure, but the qualifier was that the corner, or corner shop, is something universally understood, and, with the right colours around it, well… the prospect of a meeting – there’s a hint of romance.

The second was more conceptual. And again, I should thank the lecturer mentioned above for this. He once said, “You students want to design the greatest international centre for peace or whatever, but if you really want to do that – make the world’s best coffee shop! Do you understand?”

I wrote an abbreviated version of this down. I later heard from the manager-barista that this resonated with the coffee shop team. I have included a photo here of what eventually went on the wall for you to view.

It is probably long-gone by now, things change extremely quickly for small businesses such as these, but I like to think that these words on a wall successfully carried an idea across. Maybe only meaning for one life, or ten, but then, isn’t that enough?

Did we successfully aid the narrative of the archetypal coffee shop? Well, that probably depends on the person buying coffee, but we gave it every chance.

I mean, the sign was right before your eyes.

_

Credits:

Garth Francis for the opportunity to participate in his online presentation, and

Mr. Andrew Palframan, HOD - Architecture, Nelson Mandela University, for teaching us well.