Titles
A-C
D-G
H-K
L-O
P-S
T-Z
. Infratecture: Exploring the urban and architectural design...A Decolonial Vision of Cities, Rural Areas, and Life A Material Return to Gendered Labor in Modern Architecture v...A New Suburbia in a post-COVID World?A Tour of the Monuments of Jinwen Train line: Infrastructura...Alternative housing models in action. Public-community ecosy...Architectural Investigation of Urban Villages in Shenzhen an...Architecture, technology and the environment: proposals for ...Balancing ACT: transgressing boundaries, asserting community...Biomimicry Thinking: fostering quality of life and sustainab...Changing landscapes and places in fluxChanging Physical and Societal Landscape in the New Normal: ...Cities without Country: High-density urban agriculture and t...Co-creating with design Urban-Rural food systems for sustain...Colonizing the harbour - The role of architecture in creatin...Colour seduction: Foster Associates strategies for architect...Concept of Garden city in Wrocław (Breslau) after World War...Counterculture Countryside: Unveiling Stories of a Fallen Oh...Covid Distancing and its Effect on Shared Mental Models & ZP...Defining Wilderness: The Evolving Boundaries of Banff Nation...Designing for Sustainable Community Transformation: Age-Frie...Designing in the Anthropocene. How living and designing with...Designing Virtual Cultural Memories for Asian Cities: the Ca...Ecotopia – Architectural Ecotopes as an approach to combat...Ethics in the Outside between Transpacific Coastal Centres a...Expanding Service Learning Projects in Design Education Beyo...Exploration for an Inclusive approach for Historical Settlem...Factors Sustaining City’s Distinctiveness. Case Study Sura...Façade as Façade: Northern Ireland’s parallel realityFrom alternate realities, to the urban impossible: Drawing o...Greened Out: Exploring the understanding and effects of gree...Hunting the Kingfish: On Uncovering and Reclaiming Exurban Q...Indigenous Weaving Techniques in Shaping Building SkinsInfinite Space of the U.S. Interior Justice through (Re)Planting Aotearoa New Zealand’s Urban ...Keynote IntroductionKEYNOTE: Don’t be second hand American – build on Count...KEYNOTE: Ethical SpacesKEYNOTE: From Countryside to Country-sideMapping 18th-century London through Hogarthian ArtMapping Everyday Community Life in Exurban Areas around Toky...Mapping lifelines and tracing tendencies: how the design of ...Mapping of social initiatives as a model of local developmen...Memory, emotions and everyday heritage in good architectural...Micro Project - Macro Subjects: Waste and reuse as strategy ...Multicultural Design Projects and Openness to Diversity Multiculturalism in Public Transport HubsNarrative and Sustainability: An Interpretation and a Case S...Networks of Circular Economy Villages: Garden Cities for the...Neuro-Participatory Urbanism: Sensing Sentiments and Trackin...New communities and new values? Exploring the interplay betw...Non-urban zero emission neighbourhoods: Two cases from Norwa...(Not Just) Another Roadside Attraction: Documenting Roadside...Participatory methodology for the inventory of Intangible Cu...Pedagogy of Integration of L+Arch. The Last Pristine Place i...Poipoia te Kākano, Kia Puāwai – Enabling Māori communit...Protecting, Integrating & Allocating Agriculture in Urban De...Reflecting on the Urban and the Regional: Designing for a po...Resilient futures through collaborative teaching Revalue. Heritage as idea and project.Revisiting the notion of landscape in Landscape ArchitectureRings of Urban Informality – Manifestations, Typologies an...Rites and Myths. A new form of countryside regenerationRural Parks and the Urban Renaissance: Finding a Blueprint f...Rural Resourcefulness: Lessons from the American School Rurbanism or a transversal overlook in our territoriesSegregating the Suburbs: The History of the Ladera Housing C...Smudge, Prayer and SongSustainable Civil Infrastructure: A Historical Survey Teaching non-designers a designThe "K" shaped recovery: The impact of COVID 19 on housing i...The analysis of public space qualities in terms of flexibili...The Black Panthers, Rat Park, and Opioid Addiction – A Rur...The Cultural Capital of Urban MorphologyThe Garden in the Machine: new symbols of possibility for a ...The Influence and Importance of Sacred Places in Community A...The Life of the River: Currents and Torrents at the Edge of ...The Reach of a Morpho-Topical ArchitectureThe street, the place where the life is. A rudofskian though...The sustainability of urban ruins—Shougang Group industria...The World Park and the CountrysideUrban CatalystsUrban Design Projects for University CampusUrban Protected Areas – between cities and rural hinterlan...Urban Revitalization –Defragmenting the Lahore CanalValue-Inclusive Design for Socially Equitable Communities Virtual Tourism relocation (VTr) - to experience the lost, t...Welcome & IntroductionWelcome and IntroductionWhat does it mean to see cows grazing in American cities? Wild Ways – A scoping review of literature on understandin...
Schedule

Cultures, Communities and Design

Calgary
Narrative and Sustainability: An Interpretation and a Case Study
D. Di Mascio & H. Darnell
12:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Abstract

The following paper explores and reflects upon the relationships between narrative and sustainability, and proposes and encourages the use of an interpretation of narrative towards more sustainable ways of living. Nowadays, it seems that in several design proposals for sustainable ways of living there is a skewed focus on pure function and practicality. To create urban, architectural and interior spaces that provide meaningful experiences for the occupants and provide a human connection with place there needs to be something other than functional considerations. Buildings and places can be functionally efficient but alienating and uninhabitable for many human beings, and this has been further highlighted during the COVID19 pandemic. The paper explores a few standard definitions of sustainability and the narrative underlying them, and proposes an interpretation of narrative based on direct experience of buildings and places. It argues that narrative provides meaning, which in turn encourages people to truly buy-in to a sustainable way of life, as opposed to merely occupying spaces that pay lip-service to the concept. This paper also suggests that walking is the best way to explore and experience spaces of different scales (including settlements, neighbourhoods, streets, buildings, parks, squares and interiors) and hence discover the narratives that they hold. Thus, it becomes ever more important that our local surroundings – those places that we walk through, in and around daily – provide a richness of experience, including vegetation that should play an essential role in our urban environments. The paper then applies these reflections to rethink the narrative behind a selected case study, a neighbourhood in Huddersfield, United Kingdom. As for many other post-industrial towns and cities in England and around the world, the future of the town should be reimagined to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle, and this narrative approach to sustainability could improve the daily life’s quality of its inhabitants.

Biography

Dr Danilo Di Mascio is a Lecturer in Architecture, researcher and registered architect (ARB). He joined the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield on September 2017. Before that, he was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Northumbria University (Department of Architecture and Built Environment) and Research Associate at Open Lab, Newcastle University where he worked on a multidisciplinary research project funded by the EPSRC. Before, during and after his PhD, Danilo has undertaken several research projects related to the documentation, comprehension and analysis of tangible and intangible features of architecture and places in five different countries: Belgium, England, Italy, Scotland, and the United States. During his research projects, he developed theoretical approaches and methodologies and used various tools, both analogue and digital, including CAAD, 3d modelling, Image editing software, BIM, game engines, semantic web technologies. Danilo participated, as author and speaker, at various international conferences in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. During the CAADRIA (Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia) Conference held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2010, he received the Young CAADRIA Award for his research.

Helen Darnell is an Interior Design educator, researcher and practitioner. She graduated from the Manchester School of Art at MMU with a BA(Hons) Interior Design and then with an MA in Design, in 2002 and 2015 respectively. In between these periods of study, she worked as an Interior Designer in a commercial studio practice, specialising in workplace design. She witnessed the huge shift in the way people work in offices, and designed spaces to support and promote these changes. Her MA thesis explored themes of narrative, identity and value through the personalisation and adaptability of domestic furniture and spaces, focussing on 21st Century ‘home-working’ practices. She borrowed research methodologies and approaches from design anthropology to propose a customisable table-come-room, with the hope of shifting the narrative away from ‘house as commodity’ and towards the experience of home. She has since worked on a number of small collaborative research and design projects, and her current research continues to explore the relationships between narrative, space and human experience. Helen has taught at The University of Huddersfield, and is now a lecturer on both the BA(Hons) and MA Interior Design programmes at the Manchester Metropolitan University’s Manchester School of Art.