Narrating Innovation. Some Stories in the Voice of Practitioners.

Starting from a research on the topic of innovation in architectural practice, the essay attempts to analyse the epistemic level of the relationship between the events of a design practice and the way of narrating them. Beyond specific contingency factors that a practitioner may point out, it can be argued that the concept of innovation in architectural design practice is conveyed through communication based on comparable narrative constructs. In accordance with Bruner, the research shows how the actions and events narrated by designers are part of legitimation processes that require a correctness of the choices made, not in absolute terms, but relative to a thematic-value focus. Through the presentation of some of the stories collected, it is possible to find a coexistence of three levels of signification on which the design narrations act. By parametrizing these planes, the essay introduces a comparative representation capable of making explicit the relationship between the components of innovation in the tales of architectural design practice.