Narrative Through Instruction: Designing Cities as Sequenced Stories

Before a sprawling metropolis or a handheld object can exist in the physical world, it is usually dissected, cataloged, and communicated – almost an instruction manual. In my dual roles as an urbanist/design lead at BIG in London and a visual artist, I treat a 500-hectare masterplan and a 2D illustrated kit-of-parts as the same design challenge. The medium changes, but the obsession doesn’t. My personal practice is driven by pulling complex subjects apart into clear, sequential layers to build a spatial narrative. In this context, an instruction ceases to be a sterile command. Instead, it becomes the translation of a designer's intent.

The Obsession with the Manual 

My visual work has always been influenced by technical manuals, patent drawings, and exploded assemblies. There is a rigid, authoritative language to a patent drawing; it presents itself as an objective truth. But I realized early on that if you subvert that aesthetic; if you hijack the sterile language of a manual and inject it with cultural memory, humor, or human friction; the instruction ceases to be just a directive. It becomes an effective storytelling device.

This fascination with archiving human intent formed the foundation of my postgraduate thesis at The Bartlett, titled The Repository of Gestural Anomalies. As the architecture and construction industries push toward total automation, we risk losing the "gestural anomalies" - the unique, physical nuances and spontaneous frictions of a builder's hand. By utilizing mixed reality to record and project traditional making skills, the research asked how we could digitally archive physical craftsmanship. Today, we see tech companies paying gig workers to wear head-mounted cameras to archive their movements, but they are doing it for pure automation and robotic replacement. My focus is the opposite: using the digital archive to archive or preserve human craftsmanship, aiming we do not automate away our own spatial heritage.

Scaling Up: The Masterplan as a Buildup

This philosophy can scale into urban design. At BIG, we view our work along a scalar ladder; from product to unit, building, neighborhood, and city. As architects, this means looking at urbanism through a multi-layered, granular lens, from the macro urban gesture all the way down to the bespoke façade expression.

A masterplan, beyond a static map, is a sequence of frameworks; mobility hierarchies, public realms, ecological corridors, and built programs - that build up, layer by layer, to tell the proposed story of a city before it even exists. When we design a district, the logic of the framework is paramount. We extract these layers, catalogue them, and sequence them to communicate the design intent. The instruction describes how the city is allowed to grow and adapt.

The Curatorial Edge in the Age of AI

We are currently in a moment defined by the exponential growth of agentic AI systems. With tools capable of generating massive amounts of spatial data and imagery in seconds, the role of the designer is rapidly shifting. We are quickly moving beyond simply being "prompt engineers" into a future defined by curatorial direction.

In a time dominated by algorithmic generation, the tactile skill of sketching provides a distinct edge. Being able to quickly draw a framework, a section cut, or an initial concept buildup means the designer retains a level of authorial control over the narrative.

We can leverage AI, but we should use it to automate the tedious, repetitive labor of rendering, interpolating, and populating layers so we can iterate faster. AI can speed up the production of these layers, and it can animate the sequence, but to a certain extent it can’t relay the original human gesture. It cannot decide what story those layers ultimately tell (at least for now). That curatorial direction is still the archivist's job.

What to Expect from the Workshop

This philosophy is the engine behind my upcoming PAACADEMY workshop, Multi-Scalar Urbanism: Concept Buildups with AI, taking place on October 24th and 25th.

The workshop is designed to teach design thinking through urban diagramming but as a critical storytelling skill. A masterplan's logic must be legible through its story, shown step by step. Over the course of the two days, participants will:

Extract and Layer: Work from a provided demo masterplan (or a personal urban project) to dissect the design into distinct, communicative layers; from terrain and mobility to program and landscape.

Sequence the Pitch: Translate these extracted layers into an axonometric sequence at the urban scale, formatting them into an annotated, legible pitch deck using tools like Rhino, Illustrator, and InDesign. 

Animate with AI: Finally, we will use generative AI tools, specifically utilizing Krea AI, to animate these layers into dynamic concept buildups. Participants will learn how to prompt AI to handle the tedious work of visual interpolation and transition, turning a static deck into an immersive spatial narrative.

The goal is for every participant to leave with a developed curatorial eye, equipped to use AI to amplify their urban design storytelling while maintaining authorial control over their design intent.