Building Narratives

When an architect joins a project, it is already moving. Political ambitions are set, constraints defined. Projects unfold across years, through shifting coalitions of clients, institutions, engineers, and regulators. Designing buildings of civic ambition and spatial quality demands navigating this complexity, maintaining coherence across a process that is always in motion.

Building Narratives examines how design communication operates within this condition. It develops a framework in which narrative functions as an operational instrument: the structure that keeps collective work legible across disciplines, procurement phases, and changing stakeholders. Architecture is approached as a form of collective intelligence, where drawings, diagrams, and models carry the reasoning through which projects take shape.

This framework unfolds through three Amsterdam projects by KAAN Architecten. SPOT in Amstel III shows design as negotiation in a market-driven context. The Amsterdam Courthouse shows design as integration of competing institutional demands under a public-private partnership. Schiphol Terminal shows design as activation amid continuous change.

The book is developed through an ongoing collaboration between KAAN architecten and the Complex Projects research group at Delft University of Technology.