The architect’s perspective on the tour and map perspective

Literature in linguistics suggests that when people are asked to provide an oral spatial description, they usually provide a body-centered narrative; they adopt a Tour Perspective, that is, an imaginary tour of the space rather than a Map Perspective, that is, a description focused on spatial relations as seen from above (Linde and Labov in Language 51(1):924–939, 1975; Howald in Discursive constraints on space in narrative: evidence from guilty plea discourse, eVox 3, 2009). I conducted a pilot experiment to address the following questions: Does the formal knowledge of architects—their familiarity with plan drawings and maps—override the tendency to adopt the tour perspective? Does the tour perspective depend on the actual experience of space? Twenty-two graduate students in architecture were asked to respond to the following questions: (1) “Can you describe the layout of your apartment?” (2) “Can you describe the layout of an ideal apartment?” In the responses to the first question most participants used the tour perspective. In the responses to the second question most participants used the map perspective. The results provide evidence that architects’ formal knowledge does not override the preference of the tour perspective in descriptions of experienced space. Moreover, that the tour perspective is associated with the actual experience of space.