Project Description

This thesis proposes a compilation of fictional narratives that reflect on the moor as ground, as an unstable terrain, of burial and wetness, and proposes alternative ways of knowing through literature, folklore and story-telling as a multiverse method of worldbuilding. Can we use stories to design with precision – not as an act of probing for answers, for newness or novelty, but as a form of watching and waiting? Storytelling suggests a movement to look not to the past, or to the future, but to the deepness of the conditions that surround us, weaving together a more complex tapestry towards recuperation and resilience. There is a deeper, quieter, slower, enduring beauty that can be employed through the use of story; shifting into tales that are neither fictional nor non-fictional, but sit in-between as simply story. Tales that delve into the thick and thin of it; opening passageways to alternative ways of understanding, diving into inquiries of language and literature. This research uses a pluralistic approach (research, drawing, mapping, site-studies, stories, etc) to understand and investigate the relationship between storytelling and architectural representation. It tracks, traces, and upends – through thick and thin – notions of geological time, history, literature and lore through a speculative imaginary of Rannoch Moor.