11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013Track 3 | Conceptual Representation | Exploring the layout of the built environment |
|
Notational systems / Transforming infrastructuresKeywords: site analysis; notation; water |
|
ABSTRACTMaps are inherently reductive, abstract representations of our environment. They create invisible boundaries, de-limiting zones for cultural action. This is also their power – maps reveal the hidden agendas of their authors, but they also seek to make legible and communicate a mentally abstract notion of the environment. Focusing specifically on cities, architects have a history of invading the geographer’s turf, seeking to undermine (and capitalize on) the map with innovative representational and notational systems to characterize the city’s complexities. These become the basis for future architectural action, effectively merging the translation process of site analysis with the design itself. This lineage of investigation into the city, breaking down and re-coding elements and spaces, extends from Debord’s Guide Psychogeographique de Paris and Rowe and Koetter’s Collage City, through Venturi, Scott-Brown and Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas, to Kuroda and Kaijima’s Made in Tokyo. The project outlined in this paper seeks to build on this lineage by using systems of notational and analytical representation, examining infrastructure to reveal an invisible evolution of change, outlining the traces left by the mapmaker’s hand and in the city itself. |
AUTHORGenevieve BaudoinDepartment of Architecture, College of Architecture, Planning and Design, Kansas State University, Manhattan, USA Genevieve Baudoin is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University and a Registered Architect in New Mexico. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her MArch from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She has worked professionally with both Foster + Partners and Antoine Predock Architect. She has taught previously at the University of New Mexico and the University of Kansas, before taking her position at K-State. Her research interests are in the changing tectonic relationship of site and structure in architecture, and in developing representational tools and strategies to understand and promote these complexities. |