Explication of Urban Park Narratives: From Land to the La Villette

Abstract

The ongoing ontological tension between architecture, art, and science is analyzed using semantic tools. This line of analysis addresses the gap in the literature caused by the lack of a systematic and traceable framework for defining the theatrical meaning of the relationship between multiple coding and performative space. The study examines Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette design from Architecture and Disjunction within the critical framework of Roland Barthes and Bertolt Brecht, and is conducted in the MAXQDA environment. Adopting a qualitative structural narrative analysis methodology and structured around three analytical operations (segmentation–inventory–structuring), the study is validated through interdisciplinary triangulation. At the segmentation phase, Tschumi’s text is divided into 19 meaning units under theoretical nodes based on Brecht’s principles of epic theater. These units were analyzed using closed (deductive) coding with a coding table derived from the literature and developed iteratively to ensure reliability through consensus between the two researchers. During the inventory phase, these meaning units were reinterpreted through open (inductive) coding using Barthes’ five codes, yielding 62 productive terms. During the structuring phase, the distribution and relationships between codes were thematized within the park’s 4 spatial configurations, based on evaluative and inferential layers of meaning.