ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the tripartite network model developed to guide the design of narrative environments as a practice. The model, which interrelates three nodes, people, narrative and environment, was developed so that design practice can take into account the thinking about language, experience, the body, time and space that has occurred since the end of the nineteenth century. In the design of narrative environments, both concepts of place and space are necessary. Narrative environments often deploy a diverse range of semiotic means to communicate, from the implicit bodily address of spatial, atmospheric arrangements to the explicit address of graphics, moving image and sound. Narrative environments are stories purposefully embedded in the environment that can be expressed through multiple explicit and implicit means. The design of narrative environments involves the articulation of three kinds of actants – people, narrative and environment – which form a network as an open, responsive, adaptive system.
