editor
oase #98
This issue of OASE brings together an interest in the perception and design of urban landscapes with a particular methodological view: the use of narration. The context in which (landscape) architects and urban designers work today poses new challenges for which conventional planning instruments seem to be unfit, while certain historical alternatives focusing on the narrative are appearing to become relevant again.
By retracing the various roles of narration in urban analysis and design to the 1960s and 1970s – for example the re-introduction of an emphasis on subjective sensory and spatial experience; the rise of the discipline’s social dimension, that is participation, co-design; increasing urban fragmentation and the disappearance of larger spatial and policy frameworks – we aim at a better understanding of the possible role of narration today. This issue of OASE thus aims to explore the legacy of these historical approaches, and to further investigate the use of narrative methods to address today’s questions of urban landscapes in contemporary practice, research and education.