Mapping: Infrastructural Environments

3 units

The seminar focuses on two components that play a critical role in the spatial organization of the built environment: maps and infrastructure. One visual and two-dimensional, the other operational and three-dimensional, both address the complex relationship among nature, culture and technology. The first part of the course concentrates on the cultural history of mapping space to gain a better understanding of current spatial practices. We will closely study maps produced by geographers, planners and architects (such as Alexander von Humboldt, Guy Debord, Kevin Lynch, Ian McHarg) to trace the historic relations between representation, map making, iconography and the modern city. The second part of the seminar will explore the projective possibilities of mapping as a strategy to decode and visualize often hidden infrastructural networks that, over the past two centuries, have become a backbone of the modern metropolis. With the aim of developing a geospatial understanding of complex interactions among infrastructural systems, socio-economic relationships and ecological flows, students will individually work on creating original cartographic information. Through speculation and experimentation, we will explore new forms of mapping that both assist the design process and serve as a tool for communicating spatial concepts with broader audiences. Taken as a whole, the seminar will examine the discourse on mapping and its relations to power, agency, vision, ideology, and creativity.