Mapping and Its Projective Multi-Dimensionality

Abstract

This chapter discusses the potential of mapping as a design tool in architecture. In general, architectural design practices operate towards the insertion of an architectural object into a contextual field, implementing a spatial order that organises cultural, theoretical, and spatial contexts by means of an architectural object/project. This contextual field is inevitably complicated, complex, and full of contradictions and conflicts. Mapping such contextual fields addresses these pluralities of differences while simultaneously producing multiple geographies of difference within the mapping. In theoretical terms, mapping is considered to be a projective act that propounds a montaged ordering of hetero-topological place-time discontinuities. In more concrete terms, when activating cartographically delineated constellations of spatial relations towards architectural construct, the multi-dimensional understanding of space comes into play. The set of relations constructed within the mapping can be twisted, folded, superimposed, stretched, warped, etcetera, each indicating specific techniques towards architectural construct. These considerations inevitably bring forward the issue of (multi-)dimensionality in architecture, as representational techniques need to be mediated with material-spatial projections.