DESIGNING WITH NARRATIVE: AN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN GUIDE FOR HERITAGE BUILDINGS AND PLACES

Abstract

While the idea of what constitutes a historic site or place and how it should be treated by designers at both the building and urban scale and how different histories may be told side by side may seem obvious, closer inspection reveals a diversity of ideas that may contradict each other. This thesis seeks to explore the relationship between narrative and form of historic places by breaking this relationship into a series of interrelated component elements that can be manipulated with intention. This thesis does this by identifying core principles in the preservation field, comparing curation theories of historic buildings and places, and, finally, by examining these treatments through relevant theories of space and urbanism. This framework is illustrated and applied through the design and narrative example of the Baltimore region during World War II.