Tell me a story...

The ability for surfaces to tell a narrative is often used as a strong feature in landscape designs - there are endless effects to be created by inlaying or embedding objects or other materials, etching, honing or sand blasting surfaces or stenciling designs.

I have recently become interested in the potential of typographic pavements to create interpretive landscape experiences - such as Language of the Birds, located in the historical literary district of North Beach San Francisco, where literature and language forms the focus of a site specific narrative through a striking landscape intervention and art installation. Sculpted books (illuminated at night by solar power) hang suspended like a flock of birds above a concrete surface patterned by a jumble of sand blasted words and phrases from local authors. These words and phrases are inscribed and preserved in the fonts used in their original print media and are in a variety of languages.

There is no definitive message that is preached by this installation, but rather a range of thought provoking experiences and a series of clues that the individual can interpret to create their own understanding of the space and its story.

It is this potential to develop the multi-layering of information, symbolism, site narrative and interpretive elements that can create a site specific design, which is anchored to a unique sense of place, history and environment. Such commonly used surfaces as concrete should be experimented with and more often custom designed with added graphic treatments or unique textures - they shouldn't continue to be generic or unimaginative blanket ground plane treatments.

Image: Language of the Birds, San Francisco by Dorka Kheen & Brian Goggin.

See also: A Flock of Words, Morecambe, England by Why Not Associates and artist Gordon Young