Mapping has emerged in the information age as a means to make the complex accessible, the hidden visible, the unmappable mappable. As we struggle to steer through the torrent of data unleashed by the internet, and to situate ourselves in a world in which commerce and community have been redefined in terms of networks, mapping has become a way of making sense of things.
Mapping transcends the supposed physical digital divide. It is the conceptual glue linking the tangible world of buildings, cities and landscapes with the intangible world of social networks and electronic data. Mapping is also at the core of what designers do; to design is to invent strategies for visualizing information that make new interpretations possible.
Topographical maps are still handy for visualizing relationships between regions, people, goods- in short, everything that depends on spatial coordinates. But they are almost useless for visualizing a whole host of relationships that have begun to dominate our world: the interactions between knowledge, power, intelligence and technology. The new reality calls for maps of a completely different caliber: three-dimensional maps, diagrams, search engines, animations. They still help you find your way but also help you understand the world a little better.Here we enter the world of design. Architects have no problem transcending their traditional role of giving people a place in this world. In their new practice, just as they did in the past, architects provide people with orientation, but now they do so not to help people stand still, but to allow them to move. Architecture is becoming the art of dynamic situations, beginning with conceptual drawings.
Another important aspect of the new reality is an inescapable urge to make things compatible, that is, interchangeable. People, goods, ideas are eagerly subsumed in a global matrix where they communicate at lightning speed, in several dimensions, according to standard protocols. Maps were once meant to represent the mutual specificity of things as a collection of point A and B that people could travel between. Now they illuminate the journey. They are not about fixed positions, but rather a matter of visualizing tensions of various kinds. As increasing amounts of data and more parameters are processed, recalculated and visualized, a dynamic reality becomes visible.
This very dynamism causes us to lose our way and fuels the demand for new maps, smarter maps, that may not really help us find our way, but allow us to retain a hold on the thin thread of understanding that ties us to the complex reality of our world. We don’t need direction so much as orientation.
Timeline Architectural History Redefined
In my pursuit of American Modernism my focus has been on the socio-political aspects that shaped and informed the Modern Movement. My other aspiration is to understand and present this information in a way that is not purely an historicist regurgitation of events.
In the following mapping exercise I have compiled relevant historical information, as it relates to US History, architectural developments and the state of country and its people at every given time. Each decade is summarized and important moments, inventions, theoretical pursuits, public expressions, and events specific to the United States are placed along a master timeline. Architectural pursuits are shown in images below the timeline, corresponding to their particular place in history. With this kind of heavily visual approach one is rapidly able to define a context in which a particular building was conceived.
