Storytelling and Built Environment: Mapping the Literal with the Metaphorical

Abstract

Stories are the things that make us human. Stories help us devise better paths for the good of our society by generating interest, understanding community needs, improving communication and interaction, and ultimately empowering people with knowledge and wisdom. Storytelling is generally human-centric. On the other hand, built environment is crafted to cater to human requirements and inevitably involves human interaction. Thus, the built environment shaping storytelling is expected to be related to human factors. A study is required to analyze how the built spaces shape the human emotions and thus, enriching the human experience. This particular paper aims at discovering the relationship between sociological concept of storytelling and built environment of architecture. It can be achieved by translating the intangible expressions and perceptions that a story creates on our minds into tangible form through creating spatial experience and providing a sense of place. The argument of the research is that this relationship between storytelling and architecture is established by three parameters – Knowledge Appreciation, Transformation and Hermeneutics which can be compared to both the contexts of storytelling and architecture. Besides, the uniqueness of the paper resides in defining the methodology that is not only significant in architectural pedagogy, but also very crucial in the practical field.