From ‘Reading’ the Landscape to ‘Writing’ a Garden

Reading landscapes as text or narrative became a valuable mode of interpretation of natural and man-made environments, by Spirn (1998) and Potteiger & Purinton (1998), who based their work on the theoretical framework proposed by Barthes, Geertz, Duncan and others. But are these critical tools applicable to the design studio? This paper examines the use of the narrative approach and its literary framework as a source of inspiration, as well as an approach in design. It applies concepts such as text/narrative, story-world, context, figure of speech and others to a second-year landscape architecture studio. The studio consisted of three phases, which included the design of a small site on the basis of a given text (a poem or prose), the examination of the theoretical framework of the concept and relevant precedents and, finally, the writing/design of a story/garden. Each of the phases raised different questions and problems concerning the transformation of an interpretive approach into a design approach. In writing their own stories, ‘telling-stories’ students developed an interesting dialogue with the existing layers of an already ‘written’ site. While some erased these layers, others used them as the basis for their design: te-interpreting, re-questioning, re-writing the site.