Saturday, October 4, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Agency of Mapping
This passage reminds me of how when photography first came out it was considered to be the absolute truth, an exact representation of what was on the other side of the lens, and how the camera was a completely objective tool to use. However, nobody took into to account the artistic merit of a photo such as the cropping, the colour etc.
James Corner is saying that people consider a map to be an objective truth and never take into account the decisions the mapper made when creating a map. So when one simply traces a map he/she takes on the biases of creator leaving no room for further interpretation or creativity. Through this Corner is saying there are two different kinds of maps, a traced map and a creative map which aids even further in the planning and design process.
James Corner is saying that people consider a map to be an objective truth and never take into account the decisions the mapper made when creating a map. So when one simply traces a map he/she takes on the biases of creator leaving no room for further interpretation or creativity. Through this Corner is saying there are two different kinds of maps, a traced map and a creative map which aids even further in the planning and design process.
Project One Support
Hi Class:
My apologies for not being able to cover everything I wanted to in class today. The fire alarm cost us an essential 15 minutes.
I will be available for questions during the following times:
Friday, October 3: 5:00PM-6:00PM
Monday, October 6: 9:00PM-10:00PM
I will either be in room 556 (our classroom) or in the 6th floor computer lab. If you have questions, but can't make either of these times, please email me before Tuesday morning.
Below are some notes regarding the things we didn't quite get to today. Note the links.
Good luck with your maps, and see you next week.
My apologies for not being able to cover everything I wanted to in class today. The fire alarm cost us an essential 15 minutes.
I will be available for questions during the following times:
Friday, October 3: 5:00PM-6:00PM
Monday, October 6: 9:00PM-10:00PM
I will either be in room 556 (our classroom) or in the 6th floor computer lab. If you have questions, but can't make either of these times, please email me before Tuesday morning.
Below are some notes regarding the things we didn't quite get to today. Note the links.
- John Snow's map of central London, showing the location of deaths from cholera in September 1854, is a historic example of how creative mapping practice can generate insight and precipitate change. I encourage you to watch this brief video that tells the story of this groundbreaking map.
- Exercise Four: Corner Reading Summary remains due. I understand that this reading is difficult. Please try your best and post what you can. We will be going over this reading next week. The Mapping Operations portion of the reading is especially pertinent to Project One.
- I have now established specific "Submission" labels for all deliverables, including Exercise Four. Please double check one last time that your blog posts are correctly labeled.
- I realize that some of you have not dealt with the Service Bureau before. This Project is an excellent opportunity to learn what they can do for you. They're very friendly and helpful, just don't leave everything until the last minute.
Good luck with your maps, and see you next week.
Project One Marking Scheme Summary
The marking scheme for Project One is summarized below.
Annotated Observations: /5
Force Maps: /5
Base Map: /3
Quality of Information Collected: /3
Representation Style, Craft and Care: /3
Group Co-ordination: /3
Insights Derived: /3
Total: /25 (25% of your final mark)
Note that in order to promote creativity and permit flexibility, the marking scheme does not explicitly differentiate between Parts One, Two and Three, nor does it explicitly differentiate between group and individual activity. For example, your Base Map may improve between Parts Two and Three, and your Annotated Observations may have been a group effort.
Annotated Observations: /5
Force Maps: /5
Base Map: /3
Quality of Information Collected: /3
Representation Style, Craft and Care: /3
Group Co-ordination: /3
Insights Derived: /3
Total: /25 (25% of your final mark)
Note that in order to promote creativity and permit flexibility, the marking scheme does not explicitly differentiate between Parts One, Two and Three, nor does it explicitly differentiate between group and individual activity. For example, your Base Map may improve between Parts Two and Three, and your Annotated Observations may have been a group effort.
Project One, Part Three
Project One
Suburbia
Social Space in the Planametric City
PART THREE: DUE OCTOBER 9, 2008, 8:30AM
Through imagery and prose, you have each identified five different forces affecting the social space of your site. You subsequently developed a base map, over which you created drawings which represented the spatial character of these forces. You will now prepare a final series of presentation quality maps which, through creative recombination, will synthesize your group's research and bring new insight into the challenges and potentials of your site.
Suburbia
Social Space in the Planametric City
PART THREE: DUE OCTOBER 9, 2008, 8:30AM
Through imagery and prose, you have each identified five different forces affecting the social space of your site. You subsequently developed a base map, over which you created drawings which represented the spatial character of these forces. You will now prepare a final series of presentation quality maps which, through creative recombination, will synthesize your group's research and bring new insight into the challenges and potentials of your site.
Although drawn from measured observations in the world, mappings are neither depictions nor representations but mental constructs, ideas that enable and effect change. In describing and visualizing otherwise hidden facts, maps set the stage for future work. Mapping is always already a project in the making.
The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp . . .
from A Thousand Plateau by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 1980
With your group and your instructor, discuss the base and force maps you prepared in Part Two. Is the field of your base map appropriate? Does it include inadequate or superfluous spatial information? What other data might inform your individual force maps? How might you sort the different maps created by your group into categories, and what titles might you assign to these categories? How can the information your group has collectively collected and represented be creatively recombined?
With your group, plot your base map, scaled such that its largest dimension is no more than 35 inches and its smallest dimension is no less than 25 inches. You may need to alter or augment the quality or quantity of information provided by your initial base map as a result of discussion with your group and your instructor.
Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin for Paris, as reproduced in
Crisis of the Object: Predicament of Texture
by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, 1980
Collectively determine provisional titles for a series of synthetic maps that combine the information your group has collected and represented. Each member of your group is responsible for the creation one of the maps in your series. These maps are to be drawn or plotted onto sheets of mylar film that will be provided by your instructor. They should be presentation quality, and your group's efforts should be closely co-ordinated so that your maps, in combination, form a cohesive whole. Your maps will be overlain onto your base map, and onto each other, but they should also stand alone as analytical compositions of spatial information. Again, you may need to alter or augment the quality or quantity of information provided by your force maps as a result of discussion with your group and your instructor.
John Snow's map of central London, showing the location
of deaths from cholera in September 1854, as reproduced in
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
by Edward Tufte, 1983
Notes:
EVALUATION
Quality of Information Collected: /3
Representation Style, Craft and Care: /3
Group Co-ordination: /3
Insights Derived: /3
With your group, plot your base map, scaled such that its largest dimension is no more than 35 inches and its smallest dimension is no less than 25 inches. You may need to alter or augment the quality or quantity of information provided by your initial base map as a result of discussion with your group and your instructor.
Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin for Paris, as reproduced in Crisis of the Object: Predicament of Texture
by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, 1980
Collectively determine provisional titles for a series of synthetic maps that combine the information your group has collected and represented. Each member of your group is responsible for the creation one of the maps in your series. These maps are to be drawn or plotted onto sheets of mylar film that will be provided by your instructor. They should be presentation quality, and your group's efforts should be closely co-ordinated so that your maps, in combination, form a cohesive whole. Your maps will be overlain onto your base map, and onto each other, but they should also stand alone as analytical compositions of spatial information. Again, you may need to alter or augment the quality or quantity of information provided by your force maps as a result of discussion with your group and your instructor.
John Snow's map of central London, showing the location of deaths from cholera in September 1854, as reproduced in
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
by Edward Tufte, 1983
Notes:
- To summarize, the task at hand is to sort your group's force maps into categories, title each category, and draw or plot new maps that creatively combine the information in each category that can each be accurately overlain onto a plot of your base map.
- Plot your base map as soon as possible so that it can be employed by all the members of your group. Your group may choose to plot one copy of the base map for each member, but this is not required.
- If you are plotting onto mylar, you must bring your file to Mark at the main Service Bureau desk (located on the 2nd floor of 100 McCaul) by 12PM on Tuesday, October 7 in order to ensure that he has sufficient time to handle your file. Please review the instructions provided on the Service Bureau website, especially with regards to file preparation. Take care in handling your plot, as the ink doesn't dry immediately.
- If you are drawing onto mylar, take care to keep your sheet clean, as per John Reed's demonstration in class. You only have one sheet, so work judiciously.
- Your group's base map should include a scale; each individual synthetic map should include a legend and a title. In general, minimize all other text as much as possible.
EVALUATION
Quality of Information Collected: /3
Representation Style, Craft and Care: /3
Group Co-ordination: /3
Insights Derived: /3
Blog Hall of Shame
With the deadline for "cleaning up the blog" long since past. . . I'd like to announce the following inductees to the newly created Blog Hall of Shame.
In the category of "Random Draft Posts," members of which have left their lingering presence littered across the behind-the-scenes landscape, we have:
Mehdi
Sahar
Nicol
Nathan
Karen
Amanda
And in the "I Refuse To Be Labeled: Who Cares About My Exercise Mark?" category, we have:
Nathan
Anahita
Ho Been
Note: to be removed from the Hall of Shame, please do your part and help clean up the blog as soon as possible. Members, your Participation mark will suffer precipitously if you don't get yourself out of the Hall.
In the category of "Random Draft Posts," members of which have left their lingering presence littered across the behind-the-scenes landscape, we have:
Mehdi
Sahar
Nicol
Nathan
Karen
Amanda
And in the "I Refuse To Be Labeled: Who Cares About My Exercise Mark?" category, we have:
Nathan
Anahita
Ho Been
Note: to be removed from the Hall of Shame, please do your part and help clean up the blog as soon as possible. Members, your Participation mark will suffer precipitously if you don't get yourself out of the Hall.
Exercise Four: Amin shahinbakhsh
Mapping is a technique that brings new possibilities. It is more than tracing what is real. It can bring the past and possibility of future together in one perspective. Mapping is a design tool for the urban developers. Mapping is known to be an analytical process that records the facts for our use. This does not make the science of mapping any less imaginary or inventive. It stands to be as important as any other part of design. The initiative is to make the existing condition evident. This part of the design is the most important since it creates the platform for creation. The technique of mapping has integrated over time with changes in technology, although the scheme and overall process has remained the same. It is important to consider the influence of mapping on our perception of future. Mapping influences our perception of the world and imagination of the future world. Mapping brings the present and future together. The new techniques have to take these into consideration.
Exercise Four: Game Board and Rhizomes
GAMEBOARD MAPPING
-presented like a game board of contested territory with drifting and layering-the analytical seperation of different agendas and issues.
-Raoul Bunschoten-London based architect- developed a system fro mapping agents and players that draws out the urban potential. -different frames over the map represent conditions )ie: socio, economic,...)
-Rauol's plan for Bucharest can be shown on a larger scale relative to around cities situated around the Black Sea, depicting a sort of cartographic stage which shows grand scale relationships.
-Bunschoten memorized four fields:
TOPONYMY(masque) cultural plan of an ethnic society)
FLOW(market) new influx and regulatory mechanisms
BASIN(urban flotsam) regeneration of ecological environment.
INCORPORATION(liminal bodies) design of institutions for conflict and negotiation.
-He then created steeping stones between the four fields. mapping all possible scenarios between parties.
-the MAP evolves and is drawn and redrawn often by planners.
RHIZOME
-point to point connections arranged in hierarchal systems expanding outwards from a mid-point.
-milieu-defined as the urban center.
-difference between MAPPING and TRACING:
-MAPPING allows innovation, TRACING is redundant and often just repetitive overlaying.
- key is INTERCONNECTION-body of connections, graphic and notational systems depicting even the "unmappable."
-See: Joseph Minard's narrative map of the fate of Napoleon's Army-sythesizes relationships using geometric forms, vectors, etc. to tell the story of the terrain.-it is essentially a framework, a "data-scape" that may be read.
-frameworks such as these can use anything from images to infra-red photos of an aerial view-field plots to show agriculture.
-MAPPING should be a creative and immaterial representation of a multi-faceted world, free of hierarchal relationships, and depicting ideas that are able to affect change. -making logical but possibly fictional constructs- similar to a good argument.
"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention." -Rudolf Arnheim
-presented like a game board of contested territory with drifting and layering-the analytical seperation of different agendas and issues.
-Raoul Bunschoten-London based architect- developed a system fro mapping agents and players that draws out the urban potential. -different frames over the map represent conditions )ie: socio, economic,...)
-Rauol's plan for Bucharest can be shown on a larger scale relative to around cities situated around the Black Sea, depicting a sort of cartographic stage which shows grand scale relationships.
-Bunschoten memorized four fields:
TOPONYMY(masque) cultural plan of an ethnic society)
FLOW(market) new influx and regulatory mechanisms
BASIN(urban flotsam) regeneration of ecological environment.
INCORPORATION(liminal bodies) design of institutions for conflict and negotiation.
-He then created steeping stones between the four fields. mapping all possible scenarios between parties.
-the MAP evolves and is drawn and redrawn often by planners.
RHIZOME
-point to point connections arranged in hierarchal systems expanding outwards from a mid-point.
-milieu-defined as the urban center.
-difference between MAPPING and TRACING:
-MAPPING allows innovation, TRACING is redundant and often just repetitive overlaying.
- key is INTERCONNECTION-body of connections, graphic and notational systems depicting even the "unmappable."
-See: Joseph Minard's narrative map of the fate of Napoleon's Army-sythesizes relationships using geometric forms, vectors, etc. to tell the story of the terrain.-it is essentially a framework, a "data-scape" that may be read.
-frameworks such as these can use anything from images to infra-red photos of an aerial view-field plots to show agriculture.
-MAPPING should be a creative and immaterial representation of a multi-faceted world, free of hierarchal relationships, and depicting ideas that are able to affect change. -making logical but possibly fictional constructs- similar to a good argument.
"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention." -Rudolf Arnheim
Project 1/2. Finch Station - Michael Pham
Base Map
Force 1 - Business
Force 2 - Community
Force 3 - Condominium
Force 4 - Korean Town
Force 5 -Traffic
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)