A proposal for landscape design process based on scenario writing phases in cinema and its application in the Darabad route, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

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 time-related 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.