Design by Narrative. Telling Brand Stories with Interior Design and Architecture

2018, published in Inner magazine

Abstract

To deliver a clear and understandable brand identity in the field of interiors and architecture, a designer/architect needs a precise method to target a visitor. Since we talk about brand communication as a commercial area of architecture, the brand message must be delivered as accurately as possible in any language or particular cultural context to avoid a faulty interpretation of the brand and final spatial design. A good example of the necessity of a successful communication method is the architectural competition where the architect is absent at the moment of the review when the judgment of the work is made. This kind of situation requires a visual method to present the design idea, not just an oral or written explanation of the creative process. Throughout years of practice and teaching, I’ve found it helpful to work with a method called Design by Narrative. It is rooted in the architecture theory 1965-1995 that was a period of reexamination of the discipline. Architecture in the postmodern era was deeply influenced by different paradigms such as postmodernisms, phenomenology, semiotics, poststructuralist, deconstruction, and feminism. Architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman, and John Hejduk introduced the approach using the projects, the drawings, and the buildings as ways of exploring theoretical propositions. Since this period is characteristic with widely nontraditional and radical viewpoints, this text is written accordingly to architectural philosophy and the framework of specialized language of the architectural community. All the architectural terms such as narrative, archetype, symbol, timeline are based on the writings of architect Tom Porter (2004). To illustrate this text and explain the method, an assignment in Brand Communication from Westerdals Oslo ACT will be used: ” Prada in Oslo”, as well as a “pattern” as an example of brand communication, such as Daniel Libeskind’s explanatory sketch in his 2002 competition entry for the Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester. I will return to this in Part 4 – Structure: Timeline. Hence, this chapter explains how Design by Narrative can help a design student in developing particular design ideas by using concepts borrowed from psychology and linguistics such as myth, symbol, archetypes, metaphor, and allegory and combine them within a time line: an ordering device that represents a linear catalogue of events. The use of allegory and metaphor in project design increases the capability of students and their teachers to reveal not only the unconscious visions of the world and language but their assumptions about causes and effects.