UE U : Cartography
AR-476 / 4 crédits
Enseignant: Maçães E Costa Bárbara
Langue: Anglais
Withdrawal: It is not allowed to withdraw from this subject after the registration deadline.
Remark: Inscription faite par la section
Summary
Teaching unit on cartography and environmental aesthetics in architecture.
Content
Maps are visual tools for thinking about the world at many scales. They shape scientific hypotheses, organize political and military power, delineate private property, and reflect mental conceptions about landscapes and nonhuman nature. We carry them around in our phones and use them all the time, but maps are as banal as they are complicated.
Cartography serves many purposes and historically it has meant different things. Medieval maps, for example, were conceptual cosmologies that could include mythology and history, flora and fauna, exotic peoples and species. With the advent of modernity, Cartesian perspectives began to trace the world in relation to a fixed subject, while mathematical God's eye views surveyed the land from an abstract elevated 'nowhere'. Accurate maps, stripped of all elements of fantasy, religion, and authorship, became essential tools for scholars and states seeking progress through scientific prediction, social engineering and planning. Cartography became synonymous with the land survey.
Modernity required the invention of "space as emptiness, as a universal receptacle in which objects exist and events occur, as a frame of reference, a coordinate system". But the flip side of treating the environment as an abstract container is treating architecture as an abstract object, disembedded and aestheticized for its own sake. From this radical separation, maps become quantitative systems for managing phenomena, while buildings become 'circulating' commodities for the valorization of land rent. But the environment is not a neutral backdrop, just as architecture is not a mere collection of icons. Buildings and landscapes constitute each other dialectically, whether in collaboration or antagonism.
This teaching unit proposes a method for critically embedding architecture. By mapping buildings in their space and time, we reveal their material conditions of possibility. The aesthetic choices conveyed in the so-called 'object' thus appear no longer disinterested, but complex, as a rich totality of environmental relations. Throughout the semester, students will consider the following questions: how does architecture reflect a social relation to the environment, should it constitute a critique of said relation, and can it project a collective ideal?
Sessions
- Cartography and Modern Abstraction
- Drawing: Visual Layers
- Tracing: Spatial Figures
- Mapping: Environmental Formations
- The Dialectical Method
- GIS Workshop w/ Aurèle Pulfer
- Midterm Reviews
- The Map as Critique and Praxis
- Pipes, Enclosures, Frontiers
- Primitive Hut vs. Tower of Babel
- Brutalist Landscapes w/ Douglas Murphy
- Final Reviews
Keywords
Architecture, Cartography, Dialectics, Environmental aesthetics, (Post)modern context debates.
Learning Prerequisites
Recommended courses
Preparation for design and research studios that reflect on cross-scale relationships and the environmental backgrounds of architectural form. Provides methodological support for orientation C. Cities / Territories and Enoncé théorique de master. Content is closely related to course Modernity, Architecture and the Environment (AR-505), which offers a more text-based version of the same critical question and method.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Draw abstract graphic layers from complex landscapes.
- Assemble those layers to form spatial systems.
- Contextualise those systems in concrete history.
- Systematize (map) a building as an organic, evolutionary totality.
Teaching methods
The course takes a skeptical approach to claims of mathematical truth, exploring the map's tension between sensuous perspective and rational plan. The method uses tools from art, planning, and history. Hand drawing guides the initial abstraction and layering process. Planning offers a set of spatial figures as metaphors for the urban palimpsest. A dialectical approach to historical development reveals hidden relationships between form and context. Theoretical content is provided through weekly lectures. Practical assignments are supported by desk critiques (scheduled in advance to cover the whole class every two weeks). Group discussions involve close analysis of historical maps, as well as texts and films on cartography, landscape and environmental aesthetics. Special emphasis is placed on hand drawing, Adobe Illustrator, CAD, and GIS but no previous experience is required.
Expected student activities
Afternoon fieldtrip to the Geneva Botanical Gardens for life drawing exercises.
Expected Costs
Costs may vary according to personal investment and project specifics, e.g., printing costs depend on the size of maps and the amount of work produced by the students. An afternoon excursion to the Geneva Botanical Gardens and a list of optional and compulsory drawing materials should cost ca. 60CHF.
Assessment methods
Continuous assessment: Intermediate exercises and class participation: 20%. Midterm review: 20% Final review: 60%. All lectures will be held in English, reviews and table crits may be held in English or French.
Supervision
| Office hours | No |
| Assistants | No |
| Forum | No |
Resources
Bibliography
- AURELI, Pier Vittorio. "Life, Abstracted: Notes on the Floor Plan." e-flux Architecture (October 2017). Available at https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/representation/159199/life-abstracted-notes-on-the-floor-plan.
- HARVEY, David. "The Experience of Space and Time." In The Condition of Postmodernity, 201-326. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990.
- MAÇÃES COSTA, Bárbara. "Conduit, Patio, Waste Mapping Environmental Relations in Bairro da Malagueira." PhD diss. École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, 2021.
Ressources en bibliothèque
- The Condition of Postmodernity / Harvey
- Life, Abstracted : Notes on the Foor Plan / Aureli
- Conduit, Patio, Waste / Costa
Notes/Handbook
Detailed syllabus with dedicated class readings available at this link. Reading ahead advised but not mandatory.
Websites
Moodle Link
Dans les plans d'études
- Semestre: Automne
- Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
- Matière examinée: UE U : Cartography
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 12 semaines
- Exercices: 1 Heure(s) hebdo x 12 semaines
- Type: optionnel
- Semestre: Automne
- Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
- Matière examinée: UE U : Cartography
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 12 semaines
- Exercices: 1 Heure(s) hebdo x 12 semaines
- Type: optionnel
- Semestre: Automne
- Forme de l'examen: Pendant le semestre (session d'hiver)
- Matière examinée: UE U : Cartography
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 12 semaines
- Exercices: 1 Heure(s) hebdo x 12 semaines
- Type: optionnel