Record Detail

Many urban design experts consider a landscape to be a network of urban spaces in which a viewer
can perceive sequential events and spaces while in motion. As the experience of time and movement in a landscape
is evinced by consecutive views, sequence classification of these events can be beneficial for defining
perceived experience. Nevertheless, very limited studies have been conducted on the correlation between temporal
experiences of a moving viewer and a narrative of landscape in urban landscape design. Appleyard et al
look at this subject in their book The View from the Road in 1964, and implicitly point to a process of landscape
design that is comparable with the art of scenario writing. In a continuation of Appleyard et al’s study about
motion in landscape, the purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of a relationship between timerelated
experiences while moving through a landscape and the structure of scenario making in cinema and dramatic
narratives. Consideration of narrative, spatial dimensions, time and motion are the common aspects of
scenario writing and landscape design. These similarities also appear in the corresponding terminologies of
design and cinema (discussed below), with shared terms such as scenario, frames, plans, events, turning points
and climax. The method of this research employs a comparative analysis between the process of writing a scenario
in cinema and the process of designing an urban landscape in a pathway. An inference model is then proposed
that provides landscape designers with a scenario of movement in a landscape that encompasses stories of place.
Finally, the proposed design process is applied in a recreational pathway as a case study in northern Tehran.
URBAN DESIGN International (2016) 21, 175–189. doi:10.1057/udi.2015.1; published online 11 March 2015