Landscapes happen in time. They are systems shaped by process, scale interaction, irreversibility, and indeterminacy. Yet the discipline's tools of representation, including plans, sections, and renderings, remain optimized for capturing a single moment. The result is a structural gap: we have learned to design with uncertainty, but the formats we use to represent design still treat representation as a finished output, something to be handed over. Once uncertainty is drawn, it has already become certain. This thesis proposes a new representational method, The Story Editor, that treats representation not as an output but as a substrate: something assemblable, transmissible, and shareable, capable of holding ongoing thinking rather than fixing it in place. The Story Editor is a visual editor in which events, choices, and consequences are built up through three basic components: nodes, edges, and parameters. Together they form the minimal structure that lets four interrelated phenomena coexist in one representation: deep time, multi-scale interaction, irreversibility, and parallel possibilities. The method is demonstrated through an interactive film tracing the Rhône Glacier across geological, industrial, and ecological timescales. The development of The Story Editor was carried out in sustained dialogue with AI, making the project both a new representational form and a concrete attempt at what an AI-era landscape design tool might look like. Beyond glaciers, The Story Editor is positioned as an open framework, with potential applications across other landscape projects, planning communication, ecological modeling, and public engagement.
Qianqian Zhao (Thu,) studied this question.