Narratives in Interior Architecture- Stone Crafts a Narrative Medium

Narratives in Interior Architecture

Stone Crafts a Narrative Medium

By: Smriti Saraswat

Currently pursuing Masters in Interior Architecture & Design (MIAD)

Abstract:

“People don’t see the world before their eyes until it’s put in a narrative mode.”

-       Palma, Brian De quoted in Harrison, Eric. “De Palma”, Los Angeles Times, Calendar Section, 2 August 1998, p.30, quoted in Abott, H.Porter. “Cambridge Introduction to Narrative”, Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2002, p.6

I was always interested in finding out relationship between Interior Architecture and narratives (as a communicative system). I thought what better way than Stone Crafts to be chosen as a tool for exploring narratives in Interior Architecture.

Stone Crafts for a long time now have enhanced the value and the language of Interior Architecture. Carvings, motifs, arrangement of patterns, recurrent patterns; all of these, can be considered as narratives. Narrative simply means saying something or to construct the meaning of something, through the act of telling. It originates from the Latin word, ‘narro’, which essentially means ‘to tell’. Every stone is a piece of communication, and can be like a word. Stone Craft has an inherent possibility of being integral to the grammar of the structure, forming a discourse, and structuring/creating a narrative, just like human language.

“The first monuments were simple masses of rock, "which the iron had not touched", as Moses says. Architecture began like all writing. It was first an alphabet. Men planted a stone upright, it was a letter, and each letter was a hieroglyph, and upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like the capital on the column. This is what the earliest races did everywhere, at the same moment, on the surface of the entire world.”

-       Hugo, Victor. “This will kill that” in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, Volume I, Book V, Ch. II

Hierarchy in elements within a formal pattern, presence as well as absence of any element, are all aspects and techniques that create a narrative. Functionality of the construction of stone crafts itself can be a narrative.  

This is a brief about what I am attempting in my thesis. But, to be precise, this small movie is simply about the base work which would sort of explain the initial spark that set this research on fire. It does not talk about the particular case studied, investigative roadmaps and the analysis.