Landscape narratives: crossing realms

Abstract

Landscape narratives are produced across three related realms: 1. the story 2. the context/intertext and 3. the discourse. The story realm is an analysable system of meaning created by the structuring elements within the world of the story. The contextual or intertextual realm describes the role of individual readers and communities in the production of narratives. The third realm of discourse attends to whose story is told, what purposes it serves and what ideologies inhere in the telling. We apply this framework to interpreting the narrative construction of one place, the Crosby Arboretum in Mississippi. To link the practices of making landscapes to narrative practices requires an expanded notion of text, of the role of readers in producing meaning, as well as recognition of landscape as a spatial narrative shaped by ongoing processes and multiple authors. Design practice derived from understanding these conditions forms 'open narratives', as opposed to the current trend for highly scripted and controlled narratives.