Storytelling Symposium

The 2018 UD Storytelling Symposium convenes experts from the worlds of architecture, journalism, and multimedia documentary. Exposing students and faculty to the vanguard of storytelling techniques and philosophies is of growing importance as the worlds of media production and design increasingly converge. From new job opportunities for architecture graduates to new expectations for business development, community engagement, and strategic communication, today’s designers must be critical storytellers — especially as our selective reliance on data risks undermining designers’ crucial roles as interpreters of the places where we live and work. The Symposium underscores a pedagogical theme central to the Urban Design program and relevant across the GSAPP’s programs: that identifying, uncovering, and producing well-researched narratives about place is an integral part of the design process.

This symposium foregrounds the process of creating narrative work, rather than exclusively showcasing the products. What can designers learn from how journalists build trust with interview subjects, from how filmmakers storyboard the structure of a documentary, or from how memoirists and novelists choose fragments of memory to evoke the collective resonance of a stranger’s life story? How do these processes reflect the methodology of the designer, from performing preliminary site analysis to imagining actions to co-creating measures of success?

Keynote Speaker: Allan Holzman, Filmmaker, Editor, Director, Producer

Speakers:

Valeria Mogilevich, Designer and Educator

John Szot, Brooklyn Digital Foundry

Sarah Nelson Wright, Artist and Educator

Michelle Young, Untapped Cities and GSAPP

Organized by:

Cassim Shepard, S/Q Projects and GSAPP

Nans Voron, SCAPE and GSAPP