MAKING / MAPPING / MEANING

“They plow enormous fields, yielding only a kernel or two.”

We are accustomed to images, sounds, and spaces that suggest form over content. They may indeed plow vast territories (i.e. critiques of this or that), but their forms occasionally become little more than self-indulgent. This is not a matter of whether or not something contains an idea, but rather the ability of something to embody the idea itself. Things are always what they are.

More maps…

MAPPING THE CITY PROJECT

This mapping project attempts to discover something about the city (Providence, RI). This is done by layering information and, more specifically, by understanding how that information is represented. We find that there are relationships between parts of the city that become visible by this process of understanding and abstracting large amounts of data.

In the first map, there are three layers of information: the current urban grid block (black), the change of the canal’s edge as the city industrialized (white), and the current flood plains for 10, 50, and 100 year storms (yellow grid). In the second, Narragansett Bay is articulated by surface conditions of sediment and granite. These conditions are arranged by age, hardness, and grain direction (as the glaciers receded).

In the first map we find that because Providence moved so much earth around in order to industrialize the water’s edge, it now lies in an active flood plain. In the second we find that Providence was only able to move so much earth around because it lies in a large sediment deposit - the result of glacial retreat 400K years ago.

Both maps are 11”x17”. The first is at a scale of 1”=1,000’ (the city) while the second is at 1”=10,000’ (the region). The last image shows how the glacial map was constructed in terms of layers. 

-Ryan

The introductory quote is from a book review for Reiser + Umemoto’s “Atlas of Novel Tectonics,” which posits architecture at the crossroads of material science and cultural necessity. It is somewhat heavy-handed in parts, but is worth reading if you are studying architecture or a related field.