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Design Process

WED-B05: Once upon a Time: Narrative, Storytelling, and Finding Through-lines in Landscape Architecture

Wednesday, September 16, 2026
10:45 AM - 12:00 PM PT
1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW

“Once upon a time” is a design strategy. This session explores how narrative thinking helps designers transform complex sites into coherent, meaningful places. Through practitioner, critic, and cultural landscape advocate perspectives, the panel shows how a narrative “through-line” can guide engagement, deepen community connection, and produce legible, resilient, memorable places.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Develop analysis tools that incorporate history and cultural systems and articulate a clear narrative “through-line” connecting site history, community input, and design intent.
  • Apply narrative thinking as a design tool, using spatial sequencing, materiality, and program to communicate meaning without reliance on signage alone.
  • Evaluate built landscapes through a storytelling lens, identifying where narrative clarity strengthens—or weakens—public experience and cultural resonance.
  • Develop tools and strategies to make visible lost or forgotten narratives, histories, and cultural lifeways at risk of erasure.