Inhabiting the Memoir: Architecture through Narrative Structure

Abstract

Narrative structures have the ability to elevate architecture to more meaningful, poetic places. Memoirs in particular enable the reader to dissociate from his or her self to experience multiple ways of seeing and thinking about the world. The act of reading a memoir is a participatory and vicarious one in which the reader actively engages with and “experiences” the events of the story, told by another. My thesis will explore how architecture can serve as a related medium in which to imbue narrative content and structures. This thesis seeks to translate and explore narrative structures into form/space implications as a means of re-presenting and enhancing processes of self-discovery, meaning, and architectural experience.