Story Makes Place
In ‘The Moment’ in a Designer’s Mind, I talked about some basic design considerations for an architect. I broke down the anatomy of a moment based on Abby Covert’s definitions of data, content, and information. I also defined moment as a single potential (from the endless possibilities of “thing” arrangements) in a designer’s mind, occurring in time and space that influences their user’s state of being and leads them into the next potential seamlessly.
In this post, I want to explore what happens when we attach moments to other moments.
The Story
The Story /n./: a thoughtfully arranged sequence of moments that model the visitor’s state of being holistically (physical and emotional) when experiencing your Thing.
We use stories to organize moments and to easily refocus our intention for the lives of our visitors. So, really, a story is a structural cue that needs someone with knowledge of sequencing, in the context of that particular design, to arrange the moments; Someone with a unique skill set that sees peculiarities and nuances within the moments that can be connected to form an experience that the visitor will perceive.
Here’s an example:
My daughters’ room was cluttered. I had placed their dresser behind the door where it was hard to open because their toy chest took up so much space. After getting rid of some toys, I replaced the big toy chest with a smaller one and made room to move the dresser. Voila! They no longer had to squeeze behind the door to get their clothes.
I redesigned the space for the single potential of my daughters opening their drawers hassle-free – this was The Moment.
The Story I had in mind was that they would come home from school, and after my dramatic reveal: Guess what I did?! they’d go into their bedroom and jump for joy. They’d attempt a cartwheel or take the stickers and paste them on the extra wall space. The next morning, they would open up their drawers hassle-free, get dressed, and go about their day. I’d rest assured that I have no fingers near the door to worry about nor will I hear, Mama, I need helppppp, in the morning.
I’ll let you spend the afternoon breaking those moments down into information, content, and data but, for now, the point is that The Story offers a structure that’ll guide design moves for a holistic experience. Maybe I’ll also turn the rug so it covers more floor area, maybe I’ll put corner padding on the edges of the dresser to avoid accidents, etc.
The Story is the guiding structure. No structure = no story. Test it out yourself. Shuffle the moments in the story above and see if you still have a story.
Now, let’s scale up.
The Place
Architecture is the space between information – the space between intention and perception. It is the form that gives way to intention and perception. It encapsulates moments and stories. It’s a progressional overlay of information, content, and data that indicates/implies/captures/eludes to a bigger picture and allows for observed moments to exist. Key word, observed.
Architecture isn’t architecture until it has an observer (be it a visitor, a user, or an inhabitant), someone to read and interpret The Place. But the invitation can only exist after someone has communicated, aka revealed their intention. Revealing invites the observer. Without the reveal, there is no longer any potential for The Moments to come to life.
Let’s scale up in the next post.
