The relationship between architecture and interactive storytelling
When I started to think about the relationship between architecture and interactive story telling the Jewish museum in Washington DC came to mind. The architecture in this particular building is a fundamental part of the way the visitor experiences the museum. The visitors are always moving from small dark spaces to areas of light and back to small dark spaces again. The small and dark spaces give the visitor a claustrophobic feeling, while the light and open spaces give a false sense of hoping and discomfort. The movement between the two situations starts to create a discomfort state of mind and plays with the emotion of the visitors. The texture and materiality of the spaces also play an important role in the experience. In one particular area of the museum, the visitors are taken to the bottom of a confined but tall space with walls covered with pictures of victims of the holocaust. Above the space there is a walk way made of metal, which creates a sound that resembles soldiers marching. I think this example can give an overall idea of how the spaces, itinerary, textures, and sounds in a building can become a way to tell a story.
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In all traditions throughout history, sacred architecture represents in itself, from the floorplan to the elevation to the carvings on the surface, an image of the cosmos in which mythical stories take place. They are a map of a journey which integrates the Real with our own search.
The Austrian composer Anton Bruckner used a great Gothic cathedral as an structural element for one of his composition (I believe the 5th Symphony)even including a floorplan where he diagrammed the different parts; introduction, recapitulation, fugue, coda, etc. thus creating a soundscape, a musical architecture which guides us through a grand mystery.
-- Winston Churchill
Going back to the architecture of the Holocaust Museum, the major thing I remember of the museum is the triangular staircase, which if you stand at the bottom of creates the illusion of a longer staircase, symbolizing the long journey that the survivors went through. So even things such as basic geometry can have drastic impacts on the translation of what is trying to be defined in an object.