Architectural Storytelling through Folding as Narrative Grammar

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-632-6_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Folding; Storytelling; Performative Surface; Material Gesture; Tectonic action

Abstract

This paper proposes folding as a means of surface-based storytelling, challenging the dominant visual paradigm where stories are conveyed through symbolic inscriptions of texts and graphics. The research reframes surfaces as materializing gestures, producing form as projections of architectural narratives. Drawing cross-disciplinary insights from fashion, the study transforms five specific pleat typologies into modular alphabetic units. This framework became the basis of a speculative creative project titled “Fold-Alphabet”, which develops a corresponding grammar of form built upon principles of rhythm, repetition, and inversion. The resulting system demonstrates how surfaces can become active and performative means of stories, enabling inclusive non-visual communication to be accessible through interactive acts of movement and touch. This design study starts by analyzing case studies of multiple pleats types, followed by exploration of folding as a creative inquiry. Each pleat typology is analytically broken down to determine the structural and communicative gesture that encodes its density and direction, potentially informing spatial form. The study then conducts a geometric analysis of the folding output, studying how different folding logics generate variations that become potential architectural narratives. Through iterations of paper-based experiments, the produced folds are tested as tectonic action that form spatial vocabulary constructing narratives. This creative project contributes to the architectural design discourse by positioning folding as a way to produce narratives, expanding the means of architecture storytelling.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - James Paul Arthur Awuy
AU  - Yandi Andri Yatmo
AU  - Kristanti Dewi Paramita
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/13
TI  - Architectural Storytelling through Folding as Narrative Grammar
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Architectural Research and Design (ARDC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 133
EP  - 144
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-632-6_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-632-6_10
ID  - Awuy2026
ER  -