ARCHITECTURE & STORYTELLING
By Gordon S. Grice, OAA, FRAIC
Architecture and storytelling have been bedfellows for a very long time. In fact, the relationship between stories and storeys is a story in itself.
Anthropologists tell us that oral storytelling is as old as language—somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 years old,1 although the oldest graphic evidence we have consists of 36,000-year-old narrative paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Southern France.2 Architecture, in the sense of permanent structures, is much younger. The oldest structures uncovered to date are the ruins of a settlement at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, which are about 11,000 years old.3
So when did architecture and storytelling join forces?
The best clue we have is the imagery scratched onto the walls of a cave near present-day Barcelona, where a Paleolithic illustrator recorded his impressions of a small riverside village,4 about 14,000 years ago. The objects in the image aren’t exactly architecture—probably impermanent grass or reed huts. And the image doesn’t really tell a story, except that written language had yet to be developed, so images constituted the only way of conveying information in a permanent and consistent way. (See also The Right Angle Journal, Drawing issue, Fall 2019).
The connection between architecture and storytelling must have been obvious to paleolithic humans. Building and drawing both grew from stark necessity. In one case, there was the need to provide shelter, in the other case, the need to provide information, and in both cases the requirement for permanence and memorability, assisted by a degree of creative invention.
But it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that the connection was solidified, and in a surprising way. Scholars decided that the Classical Latin word historia (from Greek istoria: investigation, hence history and historical narrative) could just as easily apply to the different levels of a building, since historia was also used to describe the illustrations and friezes used to adorn the outside of important structures. As writer Dan Pupius explains it, “in mediaeval times, buildings often had carvings depicting myths and legends, and the higher the building, the more ‘stories’ (or narratives) they had.”5 To clarify (or possibly confuse) the distinction, it was decided to spell the building historiae as storey/storeys and the narrative historiae as story/stories—a distinction that still exists in most countries of the world.
The exception, as you might expect, is found in American English. With the 1828publication of of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language,6 the distinction was erased. For those who live in the United States or within its sphere of linguistic influence, a storey is just a story. And, for now, that’s where this story ends. [434]
WHAT IS A STORY?
A story is a way of connecting experiences so that they have meaning and memorability. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end: a setting, a rising action, a climax and a resolution. A story—written, told, drawn, filmed, danced, signed or acted—presents a way of making sense of the utter randomness of life’s experiences.
In his book The Triumph of Narrative, the late Robert Fulford7 has drawn an important distinction between stories and experiences: “A story has shape, outlines, limits; an experience blurs at the edges and tends to merge imperceptibly with related experiences.” In effect, “Storytelling is an attempt to deal with and at least partly contain the terrifyingly haphazard quality of life.”
In other words, life experiences—some planned, but mostly random—tend to lack cohesion. One event may be connected to other events, or it may not. Storytelling gives us a way of making those connections, in order to understand them and possibly to learn something from them.
This would appear to put storytelling and architecture at odds, since there is normally nothing “terrifyingly haphazard” about architecture. But, like storytelling, architecture is meant to help organize everyday affairs. Even the process of designing and constructing buildings is carefully planned and coordinated. This organizational aspect of architecture might be viewed as a kind of story, in itself: The beginning (project statement), the rising action (working through the problem), and the end product are all plotted, so all that remains is to relate the story and find a little excitement. The construction process might be seen as part of this same story, or as a separate story—from digging a hole to cutting the ribbon.
Unfortunately, these stories are not all that interesting, except to the professionals involved, and to writers of reports and insurance case studies. In fact, lacking the elements of excitement, surprise, drama, etc., architectural stories are barely stories at all.
WHAT IS AN ARCHITECTURAL STORY?
When most people think about architecture, they see it as “buildings”—constructed things. Tell somebody you’re an architect, and they will invariably ask you what you’ve built. But every architectural project is a story—or a number of stories—not because every project follows a carefully planned path, although many do, but because architecture is not a Swiss watch. Unforeseen and unforeseeable events have a way of intruding into the process, sometimes making design and construction more like a scavenger hunt than a steady path from A to Z. As a result, Architecture has many interesting stories to tell. Beyond the built artifact and the sequence of preplanned actions that created it, there are the rabbit-holes, pitfalls, setbacks, human interactions, disagreements, misunderstandings, inadvertent discoveries, stark realizations, wastebaskets full of ideas, etc., etc., not to mention the stories that a building creates on its own: a building must be experienced, maintained, preserved, (sadly) demolished and (happily) replaced, once they’ve been created.
In an architectural story, the events, whether random or planned, have a vitality. The Architect sets out to arrange and direct these events toward their happy conclusion, but they often follow their own unpredictable course. As in any story, at least any story worth telling, there are unexpected twists and turns. The adventure of architecture contains many stories that deserve to be told.
There is a lot of good writing about architecture: history, ideas, theories, philosophies, techniques, critiques, monographs, manifestos, etc. but too few stories.
WHOSE STORIES ARE THEY?
Many people contribute to the creation of architecture—architects, consultants, constructors, suppliers, etc.—and there are the countless others who have played no part in creating the work, but whose lives are affected by it. There are many notable descriptions by people who have been moved by an architectural experience, including musicians, painters, urban sketchers, photographers and writers. Take for example the illustrated books and subsequent short films by David Macaulay, the paintings of Canaletto, Monet, Turner, David Roberts, RA; and the writing of Ken Follett, Herbert Muschamp, and many others.
Then there’s the demise of a work of architecture. The loss of a building can be just as moving as its creation. The imminent loss of the Ontario Science Centre (See The Right Angle Journal, “Architectural Obsolescence”) has caused an outpouring of emotion. The near-loss of “one of the greatest achievements of European civilization,” is passionately described in Ken Follett’s Notre-Dame.8 The 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center has created many stories, (See Rita Devgan’s essay in this issue), as well as an entire social movement.
In an architectural story, the architect may be the main character or protagonist, merely a contributor to the evolving drama, or entirely absent. Architects have stories to tell, but so do building owners, end-users, custodians, passersby, historians etc. These are all stories about architecture, even without the architect’s unique insights.
STORIES THAT BUILDINGS TELL
Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves.
—Julia Morgan, architect of Hearst Castle9
Architects sometimes claim that their buildings can tell their own stories. In some cases, this is true, but not often. Most commonly, buildings make “statements” or convey attitudes, which is not the same as telling a story. But buildings can tell stories through suggestion, without necessarily articulating them. An excellent Canadian example is Moriyama and Teshima’s War Museum, where the historical events are already familiar to most visitors. The architecture replaces comfort with discomfort, as in Libeskind’s Holocaust Museum, providing stark reminders and focusing our attention. Another example is Ron Thom’s Massey College, where the embodied story about the pursuit of knowledge resides in every brick and is spelled out in the words of George Santayana that wind around the Ondaatje Dining Hall, “To be happy, you must be wise. . . .”
The philosopher Jean Paul Gustave Ricoeur believed that architecture had the same power as storytelling in “creating memory,” and “making what’s absent present.” To Ricoeur, narrative tells a story in time, while architecture builds a story in space. Something is constructed, whether in the physical or the mental space, and that something becomes inhabited with memories and experiences.10
Back to the Middle Ages again. Before Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, around 1450, architecture was sometimes thought of as stories “written in stone,” and that people could “read” buildings like they read stories. In fact, many people couldn’t read stories at all, so buildings had to do the job. In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, set in 1482, the Archdeacon Claude Frollo explains that architecture is the living record of man’s achievement—a continuous account of the history of civilization. He fears that the invention of the printing press, which had now made written stories available to the masses, would crush architecture.
Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.8
The Archdeacon for a while considered the gigantic edifice, then, stretching with a sigh his right hand toward the printed book that lay open on the table, while his left hand pointed at Notre-Dame, he said, "Alas! This will kill that! ... The book will kill the building!9 — Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
It’s difficult to imagine that buildings were once “read” like books, and yet this has always been an unspoken requirement of architecture. When we use words like “iconic,” “responsive,” and “contextual,” aren’t we really saying that we want our buildings to tell a story?
In fact, with or without Mediaeval sculptures adorning their exteriors—or for that matter, murals, signs, billboards or graffiti—buildings have their own stories to tell. Once the architect’s contract is fulfilled, and the story of the building’s creation and construction have come to an end, the building’s own story begins. The end of one story is the beginning of another.
BUILDINGS AS CHARACTERS IN A STORY
I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture – Tadeo Ando12
Buildings often play a starring role in a story. Writers of fiction, such as Orhan Pamuk, Donna Leon, Kazuo Ishiguro and JG Ballard, and many others, rely on architecture to impose not just a context, but an actual presence. In this sense, architecture performs the same function that it does in real life: not just a monument or a vessel, but an enabler. What does architectural space allow us to do? Encourage us to do? Inspire us to do? Some architects and planners argue that architecture’s greatest contribution is as a theater in which the stories of our lives are performed. This is certainly true in Architectural Fiction.
In the mystery fiction of Donna Leon, the existence of Comisario Brunetti would be unthinkable without the backdrop of Venice and its unique architecture. For Pamuk, in My Name is Red, Istanbul creates the setting and the stimulus for the passage of a stifling Islamic society into the modern age. In Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, a country manor provides a physical component to British class distinctions. In all cases, the architecture is rich with history. In High-Rise (book and film), Ballard uses contemporary architecture to provide a more jaundiced view of its influence on people’s lives. Like Poe, in The Fall of the House of Usher, he portrays architecture as a dark force. In fact, also like Poe, the gives his architecture almost human characteristics.
Excellent examples of architecture-in-a-leading role can be found in graphic fiction. When, in 2015, the OAA sponsored an Architectural Fiction Workshop, with a focus on flash fiction, it also dwelt on the collaboration of drawing and writing in graphic fiction, inspired largely by the work of two graphic novelists: Chris Ware and Will Eisner.
Chris Ware’s Building Stories13 is, as the name suggests, several stories—an affectionate assembly of 14 separate items within a single large box, each item telling a story of the interaction between individuals and buildings. The box and its contents represent a kind of architecture in themselves, in that they consist of a variety of elements to be organized experienced as the reader/viewer sees fit.
In The Building,14 Will Eisner presents a connected series of graphic stories about the life of a building and those whose lives are affected by it. To Eisner, buildings aren’t just objects in the landscape. They are both observers and active participants in the day-to-day life of their community. In Eisner’s stories, the human characters live and die to be replaced by other characters, just as the building itself lives out its lifespan to be replaced by a new architectural marvel, with newer stories to tell. And life goes on.
In Building Stories and The Building it’s almost as though the buildings themselves are telling the stories. When architecture tells stories, those stories are not necessarily about architecture. They are the lived experiences that unfold when the architect is no longer involved—which is not what Julia Morgan meant, when she said that “buildings speak for themselves.” That would be the building speaking for the architect. The more interesting stories are those where the building speaks for those it serves—occupants and visitors.
EVERY PROJECT IS A STORY
My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.
– Bernard Tschumi15
There are many stories embodied in every building—backstories, design narratives, production crises—that usually only the building’s creators can know. Then, there are the stories that the building itself can reveal—stories about culture, history, geography, politics, etc.—to those who have the skill and interest to interpret them. Then, as in the graphic fiction described above, buildings may have stories that we can only imagine. To the extent that every building provides a stage or an arena, where performers like us can play out life’s dramas, architecture routinely performs one of its most important functions: it doesn’t tell stories as much as it observes and directs them.
Architects often imagine that a building’s stories are there for anyone to read: the use of indigenous forms and materials, the unique way that the building relates to the landscape. The difficulty with—or maybe the beauty of—such stories is that too few people understand them. To tell its stories in all their complexity and poetry, help is needed. This is where human storytellers come in.
Victor Hugo may have been on the right track. Architecture and writing already have a kinship that is often overlooked. Both represent an art, a science, a profession, a culture and an attitude. Both rely on structure, organization, functionality and “delight.” There is no reason that writing, like architecture, can’t be practical, tangible and experiential, or that architecture can’t be narrative, informative and poetic.
NOW WHAT?
My mother used to say to us kids: “Are you telling the truth or are those just stories?” That was long before our current “post-truth” era, and things were so much simpler. Information fit into one of two categories. They were either true (facts) or false (stories). To parents in the last century, a story was something that you read at bedtime, about things that never happen, except in childhood dreams. By contrast, the truth was something you saw or read on the news: stark reality.
How times have changed. Today, stories are everywhere—on the news (“human interest”), in political statements (the modern equivalent of bedtime stories), in “alternate facts” (the opposite of reality), and in almost every job posting, (“we’re looking for storytellers”) and marketing self-promotion strategy (“how brands tell stories”). In short, everything is a story because the word can mean anything we want it to mean. We are drowning in stories—true, false, subject to interpretation, and “taken out of context.” Our job, as architects, planners and designers, is to tell our stories in ways that distinguish meaning and significance from sophistry and distraction.
Architecture and storytelling engage people at a human scale. Together, they help us make sense of the mayhem that surrounds us by organizing our lives, providing comfort and giving us a sense of belonging. They help us to understand and remember. They stimulate our imagination. They express things that are otherwise ineffable. And if writing (along with artful public speaking) is a dying art, there are many other forms of thoughtful expression—TV, movies, gaming, animation, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. Storytelling will survive, so will architecture, and their 36,000-year connection will remain unbreakable.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Every building tells a story. These stories are grounded in our emotional connection to architecture. Our built environment protects us, surrounds us, defines us, and gives us a place to live our live. – Story Building: Secrets of Narrative Placemaking and Design from Entertainment Architecture16
NOTES:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_storytelling
2. https://www.wordsalive.org/blog/2018/9/5/the-history-of-storytelling
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Dictionary
7. Robert Fulford. The Triumph of Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi, 1999
8. Notre-Dame. Ken Follett. New York: Penguin, 2019
9. Julia Morgan, was the first woman to receive an AIA gold Medal. The quote is also the title of a book Independently published (Jan. 5, 2021)
10. Abdelmajid Hannoum. Paul Ricoeur On Memory. Paris: ResearchGate, 2000.
11. Victor Hugo. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre Dame de Paris). Hapsgood, I., trans. New York: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1831 Book 5, Ch. 2, 160–161
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/107/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/1900/book-fifth-chapter-2/
12. Tadeo Ando, designboom interview, Milan, Italy, October 1, 2001 https://www.designboom.com/interviews/tadao-ando/
13. Chris Ware. Building Stories. Toronto: Random House, 2012
14. The Building, Will Eisner. Princeton, Wis: Kitchen Sink Press, 1987.
15. Bernard Tschumi, in conversation with the New York Times’ Edward Lewine, June 8, 2008.