Cartographic Catalysts: Activating The Architectural (Postgraduate) Studio

Nicola Crowson and Tina Wallbridge

This paper reveals some of the mapping practices explored in our architectural master’s studio run at the University of Portsmouth. The Future Architecture & Time Machines studio for the Master of Architecture[1] explores architectural interventions via a series of cartographic catalysts to uncover future possibilities. The studio is in its third year, and this is the first year unfettered by covid restrictions.

As lovers of maps and map makers, we are joint researchers engaged with the power of mapping and drawing as a research tool. We believe that it is important that research and teaching come together in an active and collaborative way. Our interest in mapping is far ranging from the monsters at the map's edges and the historic, to Peter Eisenmann's analytical diagrams as generative devices. Our research is particularly concerned with narrative and arts practices as opposed to the traditional site analysis and geographic basis in which architects have historically engaged as site analysis. This ongoing research has enabled us to uncover more than site data to expose the essence of place in relation to cultural, historic and imagined futures. Concerned less with the mapped data than how its reworking and reimagining can translate the tangible and intangible aspects of ‘place’, allowing us to re-imagine placemaking.

In our research and our studio teaching, we view ‘mapping as an active agent for cultural intervention’[2] and believe in the ‘creative act of mapping’.[3] In Corners words an action, ‘in which each step carries past, present and future to summarise, speculate, critique, unfold’ and through mapping to ‘construct an argument and embed it’ through ‘relational reasoning’.[4] This collection of maps expose and explore how mappings evolve and how the interface between the authors (tutor, student and co-drawing) and the map, enact action and agency in site choice, brief writing and decision making. The paper does not aim to evaluate or give hierarchy to these ideas, rather it aims to demonstrate how different narratives, intangible aspects, sensibilities, and voices affect the mapping frame, action, field and operation and afford agency to the contextualisation of ideas. 

The studio works through a series of ‘cartographic imaginations’[5] from promises to the future (framing individual values in place), through a series of mappings which utilise collage and time frames to explore strategies, interventions, and insertions along the fragile edges of the Solent Water, UK. The field of the drawing table enables us to explore the allure of the map through cartographic imaginaries. The table is our surface, our ground to co-create, to break convention. By framing, orientating, scaling, using graphic, filmed and textural experiments we shift our view to discover ’new and latent relationships’[6] and reveal situated architectural possibilities using the ‘relational reasoning’ of the map. The drawing table is a place to project literally and metaphorically. This method of place reading represents our continuing practice and research exploring how stories form ‘spatial textiles’[7], which can structure and enhance our understanding of place (context). Re-reading and re-presentations of context of ideas to (in)form contemporary architectural and urban design that resonate in place.

The Solent, its body of water and its fragile edges set the scene for this year's studio and its physical mapping experiments. Playing with scale from global (warming) to city structures, forts, fields to body all related to uncovering the hidden estuarine histories, futures, and stories. These mappings layer narratives to frame ideas for future architectural, landscape and urban interventions and form the basis for a future Atlas (currently being compiled). The maps in the design process are not forgotten; they are valued and used to inform the students practice and position. Through this ongoing process we continue to value ‘mapping as an active agent for cultural intervention’.[8]  In previous years, the maps themselves have been on public display as ‘The Map Room’ which explores the fort as a time machine and the curated work presents Portsmouth, its ring of forts and fortifications as a constellation of stories (The Map Room: Exploring the Fort as Time Machine. 2022).

The work shared here from Future Architecture & Time Machines (2022-23) reveals four distinct thematic ways in which new practices of mappings are emerging in our studio of haptic playing, temporal crafting, situated dreaming & stratified scale shifting:

Haptic playing: Dissolving the liminal: Dissolving fabrics, stitching, filming, soaking, the maps themselves evolve and modify through action. Projects growing from the concepts of time, timelessness, perceptions of beauty and adaptation to change and the liminal tidal edges.

Temporal Crafting: Mapping the evolving edge: Layering the ecological layers of the Solent’s fragile edges exposes the potential for a new layered strategic document responding to the complexity of the ramsar, bird migrations, salt marshes and exposed toxicity of the fragile edges

Situated Dreaming: Collaging dystopia: Playful collaging, filming, scenography, exploring the ideas of the power of memory, story and film, the protagonist and characters are mapped out as a way to survive a dystopian flooded edge.

Stratified Scale Shifting: Narrative mapping: Combining, shifting and layering research of the story in place, these initial mappings, changing edges and defensive structures to combine body, nature and architecture.

It is critical the working method for the design studio allows authors to explore their own promises to the future, allow for the growth of personal research through maps and time for experimentation. Thus the methods used to create the creative mappings vary and the method below should be considered as an open set of invitations or starting points. These invitations do not attempt to define the outcome more act as thematic frames to explore maps in their making and play through drawing maps. Our invitations are as follows:

a) Collect a range of maps of your chosen place. These should be from a range of disciplines and created for broad purposes. Mapped data, historical maps, current, factual maps, ordinance survey mappings, lidar scans, cultural and political maps, astrological & geological maps. The selection made by each author will help to focus an interest.   

b) Layer the maps together. Select a map scale to work at and trace or adjust the maps to the same scale. If using digital maps, then bring them back to the physical whenever possible. Directly layer them on top of each other. Use drawings and trace overlays to identify emerging themes of interest and begin to synthesis information together. The layered map will create a drawing that for the first-time captures and makes new observations about place. Layering previously unseen representations together. At this stage the maps should be removed from the original representations as they have been redrawn or manipulated. They become map-drawings. Shifting media often changes how we view the work. Don’t be frighted to peel back or remove layers – removal is a powerful tool.

c) Weave in time to your thinking. It is important to consider on the past present and future. Use data to develop future mapping of the physical, social, cultural, and political map and explore how these changes over time. The combination of the past, present and future (the imagined) add the dynamic of time and change is important to capture.

d) Combine the factual and creative through drawing. How the factual and creative come together in dialogue and are negotiated is part of the journey. Consider what stories emerge (fact and fiction) and/or how these can be woven into the map through scale shift, abstraction or the application of collage. Draw these and add them to your layered map.

e) Record each stage of the process. The development and testing of this process can reveal significant moments in the creative process and new mappings can emerge. Capture the experimentation through photographs and keep all developing work.

f) Stand back and drawing out what the maps is representing and presenting. During the maps creation information has been selected, translated, organised and shaped. How you have done this in the map will help set a position on architecture and consider the siting of architecture. The map is the start of the journey.

These mappings act as cartographic catalysts; they uncover future possibilities and form the basis of an Atlas that frames the Solent edge. These will progress to activate and frame and inform ideas for future architectural, landscape and urban propositions.

Notes

[1]The Map Room: Exploring the Fort as Time Machine (2022). [Exhibition]. Future Architecture & Time Machines, Portsmouth School of Architecture. Storehouse 9, The Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth. Sept & Oct 2021.

[2] Corner, J. (1999) The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention. In ed. Cosgrove, D (ed.) Mappings. Reaktion, London, pp. 213–252.

[3] Pallasmaa. J (2009) The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Wiley, Chichester, U.K. pp. 89-90.

[4] Corner, J (1999)

[5] Desimini, J. & Waldeheim, C. (2016) Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the landscape imaginary. Princeton Architectural Press

[6] (Corner, J 1999)

[7] Lyu, F. ‘Architecture as spatial–textile storytelling: Metamorphosis of frieze as a narrative medium mediating the Panathenaia festival.’ Frontiers of Architectural Research. Vol. 5.  Issue. 4. 2016. Pages. 489-498.

[8] Corner, J (1999)