laba

U E UC A R T OG R A P H Y

FS 16

EPFL_ENAC_LABA

Laboratoire Bâle

BÁRBARA MAÇÃES COSTA

PIRI REIS, MAP OF RHODES, C.1525

… In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map

of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire,

the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer

satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose

size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The

following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as

their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without

some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and

Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that

Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic

of the Disciplines of Geography.

—Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science

introduction 1 Landscape Cartography 3 The Map is Fiction / The Map is Real 5 Cartography is Drawing 7

method 9 Site, Frame, Selection, System, Reference, Language 10–5

assignments 17 Drawings 18 Tracing 24 Map 28 Experimental Map 36

info 45

1

introduction

Landscape Cartography

The Map is Fiction / The Map is Real

Cartography is Drawing

32

In his seminal 1983 essay Le Territoire Comme Palimpseste, André Corboz compares the

territory to a layered parchment with inscriptions and erasures attributed to both intentional

and accidental, natural and human, factors. Tracing a narrative out of the ways in which we have

represented the territory, he identifies a historical opposition between the map – the God’s eye

view, ubiquitous, abstract and descriptive – and the landscape – the human perspective that

projects an état d’âme onto a scenery. The map renders the territory as an object, while the

landscape acknowledges it subjectively. The former has the pretense of exactitude, while the

latter is relative to each viewer’s conscience. Corbóz proposes a challenge to this opposition by

stating that with the advent of satellite imagery and high speed transport, multilocation appears

to have become a human condition and the subject position has become more complex. The

network configurations of contemporary territories have introduced an overlaying of different

speeds and spatio-temporal perceptions. These layers of movement have overlapped with layers

of archaeology and geology, traces of past territorial inscriptions of both deliberate and fortuitous,

human and natural, causes. In reaction to this, he proposes the “palimpsest” as a metaphor

for reading the territory in its depth: as a miscegenation of environments that are overlapped

in strata. The palimpsest challenges the notion of the territory as surface and its affiliated

emphasis on perimeter and propensity for tabula-rasa appropriations. Instead, the territory as

palimpsest requires a close reading of its traces and fragments, aimed at interventions that work

in a spirit of recycling.

This course aims to teach what could be described as Landscape Cartography — a combination

of the map and the landscape, between a technical drawing and subjective painting, in a way that

is always open, incomplete, contextual and project-driven. Its goal is to provide the students with

territorial literacy by giving them a language with which to read and write about the territory,

following a method based on the layering of territorial systems evoked by Corbóz’ palimpsest.

landscape cartography

One need only look at the layers of the city that archaeologists show us: they appear as a primordial

and eternal fabric of life, an immutable pattern. . . . Destruction and demolition, expropriation and

rapid changes in use and and as a result of speculation and obsolescence, are the most recognizable

signs of urban dynamics.

—Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, 1975

PIETRO DEL MASSAIO, MAP OF ROME ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY’S COSMOGRAPHY, 1469

54

Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping

down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To

whom, if not to them and their master [Tuner], do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our

river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge? The extraordinary

change that has taken place in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to a

particular school of Art.

—Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, 1909

the map is fiction / the map is real

For a landscape to be, it is necessary that a fragment of reality be gathered under an idea,

a coalescing form, an aesthetic concept. This unifying process is what Alan Roger called

“artealization”. Quoting Oscar Wilde in his 1997 essay Court Traité Du Paysage, Roger argues

that it is through art that the pays (the land as neutral and inert substance) is elevated to paysage

(the landscape as cultural object). Artealization is the process of transforming the world into

an artefact (a landscape) and cartography is precisely this act of artificializing the land, of

humanizing the territory through the projection of fictions and affective narratives onto reality.

Landscape is thus fabricated as a result of cultural appropriation, and the characteristics of

that which a map represents are always relative to the subjectivity of a human observer. The

territory is not strictly human, but landscapes and maps are always anthropocentric narratives.

But despite this apparent empiricism, cartographic drawing reveals hidden structures, spatial

scales and points of view that are not immediate to human experience. In ascribing an image

(representation) to the territory, maps convey a perceptive feeling to realities unavailable to

the human senses. Cartography is never neutral or passive, and its reading the world always

blurs with an inevitable degree of fabrication (the most meticulous mimesis will never vouch for

absolute truth) but at the same time, cartography has the ability to foreground the unconscious

layers of the territory and reveal an archaeology of hidden (perhaps even non-human) truths.

HEINRICH BÜNTING, CLOVER LEAF MAP, 1581

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cartography is drawing

Cartography is an artistic medium for reading, representing and constructing the real. As

such, cartography translates the territory, which in its totality is chaotic and complex, into

“domesticated” fragments, selected and composed under the aegis of an aesthetic unity.

What kind of law . . . determines this selection and composition? Whatever it is that we can take in

through just one glance or from within our momentary field of vision is not landscape but, at most,

the raw material towards it. In the same way a row of books placed next to each other does not by

itself add up to ‘a library’ – until and unless, and without a single book being added or removed, a

certain unifying concept comes to encompass and give a form to them. . . . The route towards gaining

an approximate idea at least, seems to me to lead through landscape as an art-form … An artist

delineates one part within the chaotic stream and infiniteness of the immediately given world, and

conceives of and forms it as a unitary phenomenon. This now derives its meaning from within itself,

having severed all threads connecting it to the world around it and having retied them into its own

centre.

—Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Landscape, 1913

In its totality, reality is chaotic and complex. In order to guide subjects in this inconceivable

space, maps encode the peculiarities of the physical world into abstract symbols, made up of

particular marks (dots, lines, blots, voids, colour) that help suggest spatial correlations, such

as direction, distance, movement and structure. Map are graphical codes and cartography is a

language, that is, a system of communication made up of meanings (contents) and signs (forms).

… information is translated through the complex semiotic systems of cartographic representation,

which uniquely combine geometry (in projection, measure, scale, gridding and plotting) and graphic

images (mimetic and conventional signs, colour coding and calligraphy) with numerical and alphabetic

inscriptions and texts.

—Denis Cosgrove, Mappings, 1999

Drawing is complementary to thought: it substantiates vague intuitions into transmissible

shapes, it sharpens visual perception, and it converts information into knowledge in a intuitive,

pre-rational way. Drawing is a machine of vision, measurement and assimilation.

DAVID HOCKNEYI, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, 1986

9

method

Site

Frame

Selection

System

Reference

Language

1110

1) identify a site and territorial condition 2) frame it as an aerial view at an adequate scale

SITE: COACHELLA VALLEY, CA, USA

TERRITORIAL CONDITION: ABSTRACT LANDSCAPE IN ASYMMETRICAL VALLEY

1312

3) select layers and draw each with distinct graphic identities

4) combine those layers into a system

ASYMMETRICAL TOPOGRAPHY

HYDROGRAPHY AND IRRIGATION

VALLEY INFRASTRUCTURE

1514

5) chose a reference map ... 6) redraw map in a borrowed and appropriated language

REFERENCE: JAZZBERRY BLUE, CITY MAPS SERIES

GILDA GYSIN, MAPS OF COACHELLA VALLEY, UE U 2015

17

assignments

Drawings

Tracing

Map

Experimental Map

1918

1) drawings

The course will start with hand sketching classes whose goal is to introduce the students to

basic some drawing’s main basic challenges: hierarchy of weights, relational composition

between elements, the presence and shape of voids, the problem of stereotypes, the unconscious

tendency for symmetry, fear of complexity, etc. The drawing assignments will be short and the

goal is to produce quick and abstract sketches — one should capture the “spirit” of the forms

and allude to them by synthesizing their character. The first drawing session will be made from

photographs projected on the wall in the classroom, and the second one will focus on real-life

objects in an outdoor location to be announced.

The selection of projected photographs will tend greatly towards abstraction, with reduced

perspective and repetitive patterns. Students will be asked to identify systems that might work as

“graphical families” because they share visual similarities and thus can relate to each other as

an independent layer. Once identified, each layer should be attributed a distinct and appropriate

code (lines, dots, blots, voids, colour) and it should be drawn in a corresponding technique, for

example: paintbrush for large strokes that are meandering and continuous; pen for thin lines that

are dense and chaotic; sponge and water for complex blots, etc. In the end, elements belonging

to the same layer are in dialogue with each other, while different layers relate by juxtaposition.

This juxtaposition of layers will result in a drawing of a system of graphical structures.

Each student will receive a sketch book to be used outside class hours as a personal visual

journal. It will need to be handed in for evaluation at the end of the semester. The goal of this

journal is to promote and sustain the experimental and inquiring attitude instilled in the first

exercises above mentioned. The student should train him/herself to see layers and systems

everywhere, be it in photographs or in reality itself, and carry out an aesthetic investigation that

points towards a personal graphical language. The journal is meant to be a space of freedom,

risk and intimacy, but also of reflexive thought and criticism.

BÁRBARA MAÇÃES COSTA, ABSTRACT LANDSCAPES, 2012

2120 KELISSA CARTIER, VISUAL JOURNAL, UE U 2015

2322 KARINA BORODAI, VISUAL JOURNAL, UE U 2015

2524

2) tracing

PHOTO: ESA, SATELLITE IMAGE OF NAMIB DESET

LINDA V., UE U 2015

PHOTO: DAVID MAISEL, THE FALL SERIES

KELISSA C., UE U 2015

Producing a map demands imagination, empathy and a sense of spaciousness, because it

requires the ability to perceive a place vicariously. As such, the author must work from position of

openness and flexibility, embracing a certain degree of play and risk. One starts from an intuition

which is then rationalized, which then instigates new questions, hence restarting the process of

fluctuation between doubt and conviction, intuition and intention.

Producing a map demands choice and hierarchy. The information which is contained in a map

must be organized in a coherent way (as in a text which narrates a story) and for that one chose

an order of relevance and resist the temptation for a certain kind of detail fetishism. Maps are

reductive — through erasure, they reveal a part of an immeasurable whole.

This exercise is an intermediate step that bridges between the hand drawings and the map. As

before, students will be shown a pool of abstract photos that depict landscape patterns. Each

student will pick one and draw it, this time through precise digital tracing. This is still a largely

conceptual exercise, placed somewhere between an abstract composition and a meaningful

map, but the goals established in the previous exercise remain valid: to identify layers, ascribe

them distinct graphic identities, and overlap them into a palimpsestuous system.

2726 PHOTO: DANIEL BERGMANN, ICELAND SERIES

ERIK H., UE U 2015

PHOTO: DAVID MAISEL, THE MINING PROJECT SERIES

MATILDA B., UE U 2015

PHOTO: MARBLE PLATE

RAQUEL S., UE U 2015

PHOTO: FAZAL SHEIKH, ERASURE SERIES

JULIE L., UE U 2015

2928

3) map

This will be the first cartographic exercise, stricto sensu, where the previous conceptual strategies

will finally be put into practice. An aerial photo will be main tool from which the map will be

produced, drawn digitally (AI, PS, Acad) but possibly also incorporating hand-made techniques.

The choice of site depicted in the aerial photo is up to the student but it should reflect a conscious

framing of a specific territorial condition. The choice of scale of this framing will be crucial. The

map will be assessed as much for its graphical quality as for the understanding it might reveal

of the circumstance that it illustrates (qualities which are, in fact, absolutely entangled: there are

no beautiful maps without a clear content communication).

The aerial photo might serve as main tracing basis but it will not answer all issues and serve

all purposes. Therefore, the drawing of the map will demand the gathering of complimentary

information about the chosen site, such as texts, photographs, other maps, etc. However, this

research will not be part of the final delivery, which will consist solely of the map and the aerial

photo, both juxtaposed with the same framing.

During the execution of this map, all issues raised in the previous exercises still hold valid, and

the overlapping of this specific assignment with the visual journal will be fundamental in the

search for a coherent language. Students may chose to add zooms to their maps, or include

in their presentation a break-down of the layers that make up their system-map. This exercise

should reflect the course method explained in points 1—4 of the previous chapter of this booklet:

site, frame, selection, system.

CARLA JABOYEDOFF, MAP OF KERALA BACKWATERS, INDIA, UE U 2015

3130 LINDA VALLANDER, MAP OF KEY WEST, USA, UE U 2015 JULIE LERFALD, MAP OF THE WALLENSEE, CH, UE U 2015

3332 PER HULTCRANTZ, MAP OF TUCSON, USA, UE U 2015

3534 BÁRBARA MAÇÃES COSTA, MAP OF ISRAEL, LABA 2016

3736

4) experimental map

This will be the final assignment, where one hopes that the students demonstrate a synthesis

of the course’s overall content, while articulating acquired knowledge with the aesthetic

interpretation of an existing reference map chosen by the student. The process of construction of

this map will now depend on the reference chosen, but the site and frame will remain the same.

The graphical language of the experimental map will be influenced, in a critical but evident way,

by the aesthetic concept of the reference map. This exercise should reflect the course method

explained in points 5—6 of the previous chapter of this booklet: reference, language.

While the previous exercise had the main didactic function of passing on territorial knowledge —

the capacity to read and frame the addressed urban morphologies and structures — the present

assignment is more demanding in terms of the map’s graphic ambition. While the previous

exercise (map) had the goal of providing the student with a somewhat pre-established language,

this exercise (experimental map) gives students the opportunity to work closer towards inventing

a language of their own. The student will be able to adjust the difficulty of this assignment to his

own capacity and motivation by choosing an adequate reference, since the most imperative goal

of the exercise is to ensure a visual and conceptual affinity between reference and final product.

Nevertheless, an experimental attitude and disposition for risk will be rewarded. In addition, it is

also important that the chosen reference be appropriate for the territorial condition that is being

depicted and the narrative that comes with it.

In the final assessment, this final project will be confronted with the overall growth of the student

(especially evident in the visual journal) which will be appreciated and commented on with

special interest whether it be linear or irregular. In the final review, all semester work must be

presented: drawings (visual journal), tracing, map, and experimental map.

REFERENCE: DAVID HOCKNEY, SIX FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM, 1970 / MATISSE, BLUE NUDE II, 1952

ERICK HEDBORG, EXPERIMENTAL MAP OF GOTHENBURG, UE U 2015

3938 REFERENCE: FERDINAND HODLER, LAKE THUN, SYMMETRIC REFLECTION, 1905

JULIE LERFALD, EXPERIMENTAL MAP OF THE WALENSEE, CH, UE U 2015

REFERENCE: FLORIAN BEIGEL, SAEMANGEUM, SOUTH KOREA, 2008

LINDA VALLANDER, EXPERIMENTAL MAP OF KEY WEST, USA, UE U 2015

4140 REFERENCE: VARIOUS BY CY TWOMBLY

TYLER SMITH, EXPERIMENTAL MAP HOUSTON, USA, UE U 2015

REFERENCE: DAVID HOCKNEY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, 1986 & MULHOLLAND DRIVE: THE ROAD TO THE STUDIO, 1980

KELISSA CARTIER, EXPERIMENTAL MAP OF THE TIGRIS DELTA, UE U 2015

4342

Forte de Albarquel~alt.9

Colina~

alt.41

Forte Velho~

alt.96

Fontaínhas~

alt.31

Pedreira de S. Luís~

alt.151

N

S

EO0 500m250m 

B.M

~ Mapa dos Lugares da Intimidade ~

REFERENCE: BRAUN & HOGENBERG, OLISSIPPO QUAE NUNC LISBOA, 1617

BÁRBARA MAÇÃES COSTA (FOR SAMI), MAPA DA INTIMIDADE, SETÚBAL, 2014

REFERENCE: O.M.A., PARC LA VILETTE, PARIS, 1982

BÁRBARA MAÇÃES COSTA, SCHOOL DAY POSTER, 2013

45

info

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l a b a - u e u - c a r t o g r a p h y . c h

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text references:

CORBOZ, André, 2001. Le Territoire Comme Palimpseste et Autres Essais. Introduction by MAROT,

Sébastien. Besançon: Les Éditions de l’Imprimeur.

COSGROVE, Denis, ed., 1999. Mappings (Critical Views). London: Reaktion.

ROGER, Alain, 1997. Court Traité Du Paysage. Paris: Gallimard.

ROSSI, Aldo, 1984. The Architecture of the City. Introduction by Peter Eisenmann. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press.

SIMMEL, Georg, 2007. The Philosophy of Landscape. Theory, Culture & Society [e-journal] 24(7–8),

p.20–29. Available at: <tcs.sagepub.com> at WWZ Bibliothek website <http://www.ub.unibas.ch/

ub-hauptbibliothek> [Accessed 24 April 2015].

WILDE, Oscar, 1909. The Decay of Lying. New York: The Nottingham Society. [e-book] Available

at: The Victorian Web <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/decay.html> [Accessed 16

February 2013].

further reading:

CORNER, James, 2014. The Landscape Imagination: the collected essays of James Corner 1990—

2010. New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press.

DESVIGNE, Michel, 2008. Natures Intermediaires: Les Paysages de Michel Desvigne. Basel, Boston,

Berlin: Birkhäuser.

SECCHI, Bernardo and VIGANÒ, Paola, 2011. La ville poreuse : Un projet pour le Grand Paris et la

métropole de l’après-Kyoto. Genève: MetisPresses.

JACKSON, John B., 1980. The Necessity of Ruins. Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press.

MAROT, Sébastien, 2010. L’art De La Mémoire, Le Territoire et L’Architecture. Paris: Éditions de la

Villette.

VIGANÒ, Paola, 2012. Les territoires de l’urbanisme, le projet comme producteur de connaissance.

Genève: MetisPresses.

SMETS, Bas, 2014. Paysages: 3 Expositions. Bureau Bas Smets. Antwerp: DeSingel & VAi.

distinguished cartographers:

BEATUS OF LIÉBANA (c.701–798, Principality of Asturias)

PIRI REIS (c.1470–1553, Otoman Empire)

GABRIEL DE VALLSECA (c.1408–1467, Principality of Catalonia)

PEDRO REINEL (c.1462–c.1542, Portugal)

FRA MAURO (?–1468, Republic of Venice)

SEBASTIAN MÜNSTER (1488–1552, Germany)

OLAUS MAGNUS (1490–1557, Scandinavia)

GERARDUS MERCATOR (1512–1594, Flanders)

ABRAHAM ORTELIUS (1527 –1598, Flanders)

FERNÃO VAZ DOURADO (c.1520–c.1580, Goa, Portuguese India)

ATHANASIUS KIRCHER (1602–1680, Germany)

GIAMBATTISTA NOLLI (1701–1756, Italy)

JOSEPH DE FERRARIS (1726–1814, Austria)

TOMÁS LOPEZ (1730–1802, Madrid)

EDUARD IMHOF (1895–1986, Switzerland)

5150

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