PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS | NEW YORK CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY Jill Desimini & Charles Waldheim
Foreword, Mohsen Mostafavi Introduction: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary Notes on Scale 01 Sounding / Spot Elevation 02 Isobath / Contour 03 Hachure / Hatch 04 Shaded Relief 05 Land Classification 06 Figure-Ground 07 Stratigraphic Column 08 Cross Section 09 Line Symbol 10 Conventional Sign Afterword, Antoine Picon References Credits Index Acknowledgments 6 8 22 30 46 72 92 112 136 156 176 196 220 250 253 257 261 270 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mohsen Mostafavi The work of an architect or a landscape architect is always situational. We imagine things in the same way a novelist constructs a piece of fiction. But the novel is an end product in its own right, as is a painting or a piece of sculpture—all ready for engagement at the moment of completion, to be read, seen, and encountered. In a novel, the concept of action is incorporated into and inseparable from the story being told; in architecture and landscape architecture, however, we design things through a set of drawing conventions—plans—that only later might become buildings or landscapes—places. The plan, as a form of drawing, is the description of a site that is to be constructed for a particular form of imagined purpose—a house, a hospital, a cafe, a park, a plaza. The drawing of each of these places refers at once to a condition of typicality as well as uniqueness. The house perhaps reminds us of other houses and yet is a particular locus—home— with its own specific set of qualities and characteristics. The qualities and characteristics of a house are temporal and subjective, attuned to the nuances of inhabitation and use. Yet the architecture of the house may also present a form of autonomy independent of its functional conditions. Equally, the plan is not produced solely in the service of actualization as building. By using a certain set of conventions, such as scale and method of representation, the plan also makes itself understandable as a project—a drawn idea. We can see thick or thin walls, the size and arrangement of the dining room, as well as the relationship and configuration of spaces. The house might also exist in relation to a particular topography. The map of this topography will perhaps be an important catalyst for reconciling the architecture of the house with the particularities of a specific location. And maps, like novels, use a certain set of conventions to construct the stories of places and topographies. Changing the scale of a map can reveal or occlude a host of information about a particular area or district. The cartographic imagination is therefore a specific mode of description of topography. Early maps, like the medieval mappas mundi, Foreword THE CARTOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION 6
based more on fiction than fact, were a way of visualizing a world yet to be charted. Yet they provided the most accurate maps of the time and helped shape European intellectual life for more than three hundred years. The advancement of technology has brought about the possibility of greater proximity between the real and its representation. There still remains, however, the challenge of translating three-dimensional information into a two-dimensional surface, including the necessity of misrepresentation as a means of getting closer to the perception of the real. What are the tools, conventions, and scales that we should employ in order to tell the story, describe the characteristics of a particular territory, including even the narrative of dynamic change and transformation? The cartographic imagination is a study of the importance of multiple representations—of seeing and depicting various realities depending on the relevance of the occasion. A particular topography can, for example, be represented by its roads or by its undulating terrain or perhaps by a combination of the two. It all depends on the purpose of the map and the story it is trying to tell. The complexity of representing the world and its surface—oceans, vegetation, forests, cities, ravines, mountains, paths, hills, villages, and deserts—requires an equally complex set of conventions. A knowledge of these conventions enables us to participate in the world. We carry maps when we walk the countryside, visit a foreign city, and travel the subway. The map is the catalyst for the actualization of the territory. But the minutiae of cartographic conventions also have the capacity to help us imagine fragments of new landscapes, cities, and houses. Like words—the tools of the novelist—cartographic conventions can enhance the repertoire of a designer in articulating the space between the plan and its actualization. The understanding and experience of contour lines as a cartographic convention, for example, becomes a necessary tool for designing new landscapes. The interrelationship between depiction and actualization, a key component of the cartographic imagination, is then inseparable from the interrelationship between what is given— topography—and what is yet to come—design. 7
The drawing of a parallel between cartography and architecture is instructive. Each lies in the field of the practical arts; each is older than history; and each, since its beginnings, has been more or less under the control of its consumers. —Arthur H. Robinson, The Look of Maps, 1952 8
Introduction PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY Cartographic Grounds revisits the depiction of geographic morphology as grounds of and for design through a series of foundational representational techniques associated with the two-dimensional depiction of three-dimensional conditions. This necessarily involves a historical and conceptual reunion of the plan and the map. In light of the ascendance of “mapping” and data visualization in design culture in recent decades, and the privileging of abstract forces and flows, Cartographic Grounds reimagines the projective potential of cartographic practices that afford greater proximity to the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself. The cartographic strategies depicted here offer an instrumental array for describing various conditions: subsurface, temporal, aqueous, and terrestrial. These strategies are organized in a series of ten chapters: sounding/spot elevation, isobath/contour, hachure/hatch, shaded relief, land classification, figure-ground, stratigraphic column, cross section, line symbol, and conventional sign. These ten historical cases are at once analytical and projective, precise yet speculative. Taken together, they form a rich symbolic language capable of describing existing and imagined grounds for the landscape imaginary. The mapping and visualization of data in design culture has changed the way architects, landscape architects, and urban designers communicate ideas about buildings and landscapes. Projects are supported by the widespread availability of physical and cultural data, and the translation of this data into visual documentation is now a ubiquitous component of the design process. The trajectory of representation—of concept and context— has moved from the material and physical description of the ground toward the depiction of unseen and often immaterial fields, forces, and flows. This has resulted in an important critique of geographical determinism within design culture, privileging, however, the intangible over the material conditions of the site. Between these two schools of thought—the purely geographic and the freely abstract—is a representational project that merges spatial precision and cultural imagination. Herein lies the 9
projective potential of cartographic practices that afford greater connection with the ground itself, making present and vivid the landscape, as it exists and as it could be, both to the eye and to the mind. The approach aspires to reconcile the precision and instrumentality of the plan with the geographic and territorial scope of the map. Our understanding of the world is increasingly informed by the availability of data. As the complexity of available information increases, greater pressure is placed on the clarity of visualizations for effective communication. Robert Klanten et al. argue that “diagrams, data graphics, and visual confections” are the new tools to “understand, create, and completely experience reality.”1 However, despite Klanten’s assessment, the potential for overreliance on data-driven design can be equally problematic. Design projects ought to be well researched and informed by relevant information while maintaining a critical stance toward the origins, collection, analysis, and visualization of the investigation. Information graphics often are not, in fact, enough to inform the conceptual and spatial development of a project. Instead, data collection and presentation are often disembodied and separated from lived experience and thus divorced from the geographical terrain; they are depicted apart from the ground condition through floating icons, decontextualized structures, and stylized environments. These visualizations too often lack imaginative or projective potential and are used to determine the outcomes of existing conditions or forecast predictions based on patterns and algorithms rather than imagining—and visualizing through drawing—alternative futures. Yet this data can be alluring, both in content and form. It is all too often a crutch for design, eliminating speculation and agency, while supporting a methodology that looks for projects to emerge out of an illusory objectivity. Through the recovery of cartographic practices capable of envisioning complexity as it intersects with the surface of the earth directly, data can be realigned with geographic fidelity. Topographical maps display a rich array of information—elevation, routes, built structures, land classification—but without the loss of spatial qualities, human associations, relative location, and material form. Maps are defined broadly here by three distinguishing characteristics they share with the plan: projection, scale, and symbolization.2 Two-dimensional drawings 10 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
and three-dimensional models translate physical space into a flattened, measured, reduced form where lines and signs stand for objects and uses. Together, projection, scale, and symbolization allow for the synthesis of data and the compression of information without decontextualization from the built environment. Maps are too easily mistaken for objective depictions of a geographical condition, and their complexity often obscures the fact that they are, in fact, distortions. Their uses, limitations, and subjectivity must be understood and respected. Distortion can stem from the underlying data, editorial choices, and representational method. Maps utilize a set of malleable yet rigorously defined representational techniques capable of persuasion, description and, above all, projection. Often as a foundation to intervention, the map—whether it is of networked relationships or a geographically precise location—precedes the plan. The plan, both as an idea-driven spatial strategy and a projective drawing, is forced to respond to the map. This dichotomous and sequential practice has limitations. Instead, the realignment of map and plan as equally projective, precise, detailed investigations allows for a smooth, informed, and nonlinear process. The base material and the project documentation are not separate entities. This is not to say that the project is geospatially or site determined but rather that the making of the map is analogous to the making of the plan. Mapping in design culture has been enhanced and even supplanted by data-driven research, yet the map remains one of the main tools of documentation, though its proximity to the physical properties of the surface of the earth has been de-emphasized. The production of datadependent drawings by designers has resulted in a distancing from the ground, scale, and materials of the métier and a loss of spatial precision at the human scale. The plan—as a spatially precise drawing of a grounded, material, and topographically rich landscape—has been unseated, rather than enriched by, the complexity of available information. Seen as antiquated, static, and allied with the “master plan,” the plan has been deemed incapable of addressing the dynamic relationships and spatial complexity of design in a globalized context. It could be argued, however, that a reconsideration of the plan as a typological drawing that can express the surficial and spatial qualities of the earth is necessary to PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY 11
complement the complex systemic diagrams that point to the underlying social, economic, and political drivers. Grounding is necessary— and the conceptual framework and representation surrounding the spatial manifestations must match the intricacy and deliberation of the systemic thinking. This implies a greater dedication to the means of drawing as well as a return to visual perception, legibility, and the veracity of the work. The distinction between spatial visualization of nongeospatial data, cartographic representation driven by advanced systems of projection and symbolization, and speculative design drawing in planar projection at the scale of the map is fundamental. Before elaborating on the advantages and limitations of the overlaps between these approaches, several terms require clarification: the topographic map, the plan, the diagram, the aerial image, and the legend. Topographic Map The topographic map is a class of general maps that tacitly describe a variety of physical phenomena at large scales (SEE NOTES ON SCALE). The scope of a topographic map once reflected the known observations of the cartographer, or the scale of human perception. It is now a hybrid practice, reliant on highly accessible data, augmented and verified through the personal collection of information and ground truthing. These maps can be distinguished from geographic maps, which used distant means to describe the entire world;3 from topological maps, which ignore scale and geographic location, like a subway map; and from thematic maps, which focus on a single characteristic, often geolocating statistical information. Weather and census maps are common examples. The topographic map, like its counterparts, does not resemble the land itself, but is a flattened representation coded with information illustrated by lines, colors, textures, and conventional signs. It is a constructed depiction of a piece of the surface of the earth (or the sky or another planet), showing the distribution of physical features, with every representational element corresponding to an actual geographical position, following a fixed scale and projection. Information is compressed, edited, and filtered, as well as codified to promote legibility. A topographic map requires a legend, and the act of reading a map requires a back and forth between this 12 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
key and the drawing. In its final form, the topographic map offers a precise reading of landform, material, and occupation at a humanly accessible scale. It allows for immersion, through which the landscape can be seen, imagined, and ultimately designed. Plan The plan is a representation of a design or a proposal. It is drawn at a relatively large scale—rarely exceeding 1:10,000—except when denoting broad context or location. By definition, the plan is a projection of a three-dimensional space onto a horizontal plane or surface, though this distinction is of less importance than its purpose as a “directive document that serves as a guide for some action in the future.”4 The plan is a view of the landscape, used to show the relationships between elements as well as the total expression of those parts. It is an abstraction that often favors geographic and geometric coherence but can be embedded with human perception and experience. Like the map, it requires skill in drawing and reading to understand the phenomenological and atmospheric qualities of the landscape. Limited in its ability to express the temporal and dynamic, the plan—as with the map—often expresses one place in one view at one moment in time. It is most revelatory as a compression and notation of a larger spatial idea that can transcend pattern and twodimensional composition to engage the three-dimensional environment. The plan, then, becomes a generator to envision and make space, a tool to project, design, speculate, imagine, and propose what is possible. Diagram Diagram is a broad term, existing across disciplines, formats, and intentions as a means to compress and reduce information into a readily comprehensible visual. It is an abstract illustrative figure used to describe a scheme, a statement, a definition, a process, or an action, free from representational and typological bounds.5 In design and cartography, the diagram can take the form of a reductive plan or map—maintaining some spatial fidelity while further generalizing and editing information. But unlike the plan and the map, the diagram is defined by its visual accessibility and is not restricted by convention. Instead, it is a way to express ideas, capture process, and explore “the deployment of blobs PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY 13
and splatters to circumvent precision.”6 The diagram has both analytical and generative applications and is widely deployed across drawing type and content. It embraces speculation, explanation, and autonomy at the cost of detail, exactitude, and completeness. Aerial Image By contrast, the aerial photograph is synoptic in its grasp, where editing is achieved through frame selection, filter application, and scale. From its advent in the mid-nineteenth century, aerial imagery offers a revelation of spatial order at work—road layouts and urban structures, mountain morphologies, vegetative patterning—that changed the face of mapmaking. The photographs operate both as base material and as a viewpoint previously only approximated through three-dimensional modeling of the landscape. Early cartographers were forced to imagine and construct the view from the sky. Contemporary cartographers can see it and use it. The aerial photograph is complicit “with the map as a modern tool of instrumentality, surveillance, and control, useful for exposing hidden relationships between cultural and environmental processes while establishing new frames for future projects.”7 The aerial photograph can be distinguished from the map as a framed view rather than an edited depiction. Often relegated to base information, the aerial image underlays the designed plan or the cartographic map, mined for its information and manipulated to add hierarchy to seemingly neutral content. The image can be altered through the construction of tolerances—by setting the range of the visible spectrum—or through manual manipulations and tracings. Its ubiquity has undermined its effectiveness as an image; the views and patterns no longer astound, and its precision is taken for granted. In the 1960s, the United States Geological Service published early photogrammetry of marshes in lieu of quadrangle vector maps (SEE NOTES ON SCALE), as the aerials allowed for flat landscapes to register cartographically. [FIG. 5.9] The latest series of quad maps have aerial photographs underlaying vector line work, whose production is enabled by the aerial imagery. The photographs are precise—with given projections and scales—but they are not projective. As representations, they are informational rather than speculative. The aerial does not have blank spaces or depict phenomena through conventional signs. It is 14 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
represented as a complete image without intentional abstraction (except in its artistic form), explicit information reduction (the deception is clearly masked), or symbolization. Legend A legend or key is required for the legibility of a topographic map, is often included with a plan drawing, sometimes accompanies a diagram, and is rarely seen with an aerial image. As an explanation and amplification of the symbols and conventions used on a drawing, the legend describes the ingredients of making. The choice of symbolic language defines the character of the representation and its constituent parts, and from those symbols and conventions, the elements of the landscape are revealed. These are then used to construct both the defining relationships and the resultant whole. By inclusion and omission, the determination of what to include on the key mirrors what makes it onto the drawing. The legend requires upfront consideration, regardless of whether it is set first or extracted ex post facto. The first map legends appeared on ancient Egyptian maps in 1200 BCE, but European cartographers did not adopt the convention until the later Middle Ages.8 The complexity of the key and its stylistic qualities reflect the era, genre, intention, and visual qualities of the map or the plan. Navigational charts have entire books devoted to the depiction and explanation of cartographic symbols required for safe maneuvering across the landscape [FIGS. 10.8–10.13], whereas the figure-ground is generally legible without the inclusion of a key. [FIGS. 6.9, 6.10, 6.12] While the legend is often consigned to the corners of a map or plan, or to the front matter of an atlas or drawing set, this marginalization belies its significance. Without the key—both physically and conceptually—the level of information would be compromised, the representational decisions underplayed, and the richness of the reading of the ground lessened. The legend allows for visual diversity and abstraction. Materials are coded and thus not required to be rendered realistically or accurately reproduced. Phenomenological qualities that affect spatial perception can be layered on top of physical properties. A temporal dimension can be added to an otherwise static representation through the expression of existing and proposed, age of construction, or historical events. The legend brings PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY 15
a subjective character to the drawing and, by association, to the landscape itself. Through characters, words, line types, signs, and pictograms the imagination is stirred. The added necessity of translation—the perceptual gap between the space and its presentation—leaves room for invention. The legend, as the embedded, distilled language of the map, is celebrated herein as the means to construct a culturally specific and spatially precise vision. The topographic map and the plan share two distinguishing characteristics: spatial fidelity and projective potential. They use historically rigorous, mathematically based drawing conventions to represent physical landscapes. Both rely on representational rather than contextual abstraction, moving away from the aspatial renderings of networks and systems and toward the geographic rendering of concrete elements: lines reference thicker, scalable linear elements found in the landscape. Notational systems of symbols are tied to geographical entities. Data is grounded rather than internally connected—as is often the case in representations of food webs, airline routes, and social networks, with their abstracted lines floating above a field of black or white, connecting symbols and pictures. Data points are related to spatial properties. Habitats are spaces characterized by altitude, topography, hydrology, and vegetation rather than decontextualized images of stylized animals, forests, and mountains compressed in space and time. Airports are physical entities with measurable dimensions, rather than places where flow lines cross and aggregate. Popular destinations have spatial characteristics and descriptions that extend beyond the peaks in a datascape indicating a location of frequent check-in. The data may reveal spots of interest and intensity, but the plan describes grounded, physical properties. The potential exists in the exploration of techniques that allow for the merging of data with the depiction of the built environment by showcasing examples of maps and drawings that describe complexity and context. For example, a stratigraphic column, a visual device that accompanies a geological map and is used to describe the relative vertical locations of rock units, could be considered data visualization. But the data visualized is locally specific and linked to the depth and composition of Earth’s surface. Plans and maps do display data (topography, land use, routes, and navigational information), but the information is linked to the places being drawn and, most importantly, is not stripped of its context. The data 16 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
relates to the structure, material, and phenomenological aspects of the built environment. Geographical information has been central to the development of digital representation in design, and the Harvard University Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, housed in the Graduate School of Design, has supported these early environmental-planning projects. Landscape professor Carl Steinitz used geospatial data to aggregate base layers in his 1967 Delmarva studio. Topography, land cover, and soil maps, rendered with dot grids, approximated a continuous landscape that led him to question the need for vector line work to describe terrain. [FIG. 5.11] This new data output rendered an alternative landscape reading as well as a method for determining the suitability of different development types. Similarly, the Scottish landscape planner Ian McHarg, in his seminal 1969 book Design with Nature, devised a system that depended heavily on geospatial data to codify and intervene in the landscape. McHarg relied on the map—and the layers embedded within it—while rejecting the plan as a formal device of predetermined geometries set apart from the workings of the world. The making of maps was essential to McHarg’s process, as a means to reveal relationships and determine locations appropriate for future development. The process was deterministic, relying on data as truth, and underplaying the unexpected, experiential, and intuitive. If these projects from the 1960s and 1970s separated the map from the plan and recognized the importance of geographically specific data for expanding the purview of landscape practice, the mapping agendas of the 1990s divorced the map from the ground. In James Corner’s influential 1999 essay, “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention,” mapping is freed from its close alliance with the ground, allowing for multiple spatiotemporal readings and contexts to emerge. The mapmaker is given the tools to construct context—and mapping is no longer thought to be a tool of description or representation, but rather an instrument to produce ideas and actions. The explicit goal is not to undermine cartographic precision but to expand the methodological potential or agency of the practice. The ambition is admirable, but the expanded context has generated an unintended looseness to mapping in design culture. Cartographic Grounds argues for a realignment of the plan and the map within globalized design practice whereby the rigorous practices PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY 17
of cartography and the precise conventions of the plan allow complex, coded data-rich drawings to read again as representations of the spatial qualities of the terrain. The move is away from generalized and inaccessible representations and toward specific, immersive depictions of the ground plane. The morphological and material characteristics are rediscovered through the techniques of cartography: from the 1:25,000 topographic map (contour) to the 1:5,000 city plan (figure-ground) to the 1:2,500 walking itinerary (line symbol) to the 1:300 ground-cover planting plan (hachure). The projective drawing is enriched through precision, proximity, and visual clarity. The parallel between maps and plan drawings is not a new idea, but one that deserves contemporary reconsideration to bring together the meticulous detail of cartography, the prevalence of data, and the ambition of design. Through a revival of the critical craft of drawing and an emphasis on the precision, specificity, and invention found across these disciplines, there is potential to reengage the terrain and influence the way designs are enacted. While there are no absolute standards or conventions in cartography, there are logics, systems, and precise techniques for describing the ground that are capable of transcending scales—from the body to the territory—and materials—from the aqueous to the terrestrial. Fifty years ago, cartographers Eduard Imhof and Hal Shelton reacted against loose drawing practices and pushed for the careful rendering of terrain, the foundational layer of many maps and landscape plans. Their painting, like maps, eliminated visual confusions, which included the arbitrary use of the color blue to represent the flatness of terrain—producing mirages in the desert—or harsh, definitive cartographic lines representing boundaries that are absent in the landscape. Imhof and Shelton developed alternative shading, coloration, and coding practices capable of reflecting the light and material qualities of the earth. As design extends its purview and scale, it is time again to look closely at maps and plans, to uncover their logics, to mine their systems of drawing, to immerse ourselves in their beauty, and to embrace their projective qualities. Cartographic Grounds aspires to return design practice to those tools, offering a close reading of landscape organized around ten diverse representational techniques in relation to the challenges of contemporary design culture. Together, they project the landscape imaginary. 18 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
1 Robert Klanten et al., eds., Data Flow: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design (Berlin: Gestalten, 2008). 2Mark S. Monmonier, “Maps, Distortion, and Meaning,” Association of American Geographers Resource Paper 75-4 (1977). 3 P.D.A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps: Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980). 4 Marc Treib, “On Plans,” in Representing Landscape Architecture, ed. Marc Trieb (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2008), 113. 5Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Move (Amsterdam: UN Studio and Goose Press, 1999). 6Jackie Bowring and Simon Swaffield, “Diagrams in Landscape Architecture,” in The Diagrams of Architecture: AD Reader, ed. Mark Garcia (Chichester: Wiley, 2010), 150. 7Charles Waldheim, “Aerial Representation and the Recovery of Landscape,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory, ed. James Corner (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 132. 8Helen Wallis, Arthur Howard Robinson, and Cartographic Association International, Cartographical Innovations: An International Handbook of Mapping Terms to 1900 (Tring, Hertfordshire, UK: Map Collector Publications in association with the International Cartographic Association, 1987). PROJECTING THE LANDSCAPE IMAGINARY 19
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You only understand information relative to what you already understand. You only understand the size of a building if there is a car or a person in front of it. You only understand facts and figures when they can be related to tangible, comprehensible elements. —Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety, 1989 22
NOTES ON SCALE Cartographic Grounds invites close inspection of drawings, maps, and plans. Many of the drawings included here are remarkable for their engrossing tactility and engaging detail. The maps and plans are fragmentary and episodic, seeking the situated particular over the general. There are no drawings of the globe or even a continent in this volume. In many of these examples, it is possible to land at the airport or to arrive by boat, car, or on foot, and, even if it requires squinting, to find the nearest landmark. The scale of many equate to the scale of human occupation. It should be acknowledged that this level of detail is a privilege. Accurate surveying and high-resolution data are expensive. For example, the 1:25,000 topographical map (and its imperial sibling, the 1:24,000), are products of wealthy nations, either mapping their own territories or those of colonial interest. There is, and always has been, a correlation between power and the availability of geospatial data. In the United States, the 7.5-minute, 1:24,000 scale quadrangle1 is taken for granted. In fact, it is the most commonly recognized US geological-map scale. The five-color convention—black for culture, brown for contours, blue for water bodies, red for highways and urbanized areas, green for woodland and parks—is ingrained. There are fifty-seven thousand United Stated Geological Service 7.5-minute quadrangle maps covering the coterminous United States, Hawaii, and the US territories. (Alaska is not fully mapped, but maps are available for Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Prudhoe Bay.) One example, the San Francisco North quadrangle, is shown in comparison with five other 1:25,000 maps from across the world. Similarities arise, as brown contours, blue water, and green vegetation dominate, but there are also clear differences with the data, precision, and sociopolitical context of the maps. The currency of some maps rises above others, likely reflective of available resources. The maps of Nepal and Rhodesia are drawn at 1:25,000 but from coarser 1:50,000 surveys, including contours at twentymeter intervals (SEE CHAPTER 02) and emphasizing boundaries and roads over terrain information. The Indonesian map is drawn from 1:50,000 aerial photographs, with a contour interval of 12.5 meters to describe the 23
relatively flat terrain. The taxonomy of land uses is coarse with an emphasis on infrastructure and exploitable natural resources. By contrast, the French focus on topography, with tighter ten-meter contours. The Swiss topographic maps have twenty-meter contours for legibility of the extreme topography on the paper 1:25,000 maps but offer frequently updated data digitally accurate to 1.5 meters for the entire country and to 0.5 meters in areas of open terrain. The maps are not only sophisticated in their rendering, combining shaded relief with vector line work, but are unparalleled in their precise quantification and qualification of the landscape. Scale is a powerful tool, one that relates subject and representation, governs content selection and detail, and indicates levels of measurement, knowledge, and access. The following six maps demonstrate the representational similarities and differences across a sample of large-scale topographic maps, revealing both conventional techniques and sociopolitical and economic divergences. They set the tone for the scale of maps and plans that follow, where the intimate prevails over the global, the tactile over the intangible, the precise over the general. 24 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 1The “1:24,000” denotes the scale of the map, and “7.5 minutes” describes the area of the map as covering approximately 7.5 minutes of latitude and longitude. The total area covered on each sheet varies by geographical position, ranging from sixty-four square miles at latitude 30 degrees north to forty-nine square miles at latitude 49 degrees north.
0.1 37.7750° N, 122.4183° W, United States Geological Survey, San Francisco North, 1993. Scale: 1:24,000 (shown at half size). NOTES ON SCALE 25 0.0 ( pp. 20–21 ) United States Geological Survey, Standard Symbols: Adopted by the Board of Surveys and Maps United States of America, 1932.
0.2 26.4833° N, 87.2833° E, Survey Department, His Majesty’s Government of Nepal (with the Government of Finland), Dhangadhi, 1997. Scale: 1:25,000 (shown at half size). 26 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
0.3 6.3201° S, 106.6656° E, Badan Koordinasi Survei dan Pemetaan Nasional (Bakosurtanal), Serpong, 1990. Scale: 1:25,000 (shown at half size). 0.4 20.1667° S, 28.5667° E, Department of the Surveyor General, Zimbabwe, Bulawayo, 1977. NOTES ON SCALE 27 BULAWAYO
0.5 45.1900° N, 5.7200° E, Institut National de l’Information Géographique et Forestière, Grenoble, 1992. Scale: 1:25,000 (shown at half size). 28 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS
0.6 46.0167° N, 7.7500° E, Bundesamt für Landestopografie, Zermatt, 1997. Scale 1:25,000 (shown at half size). Reproduced by permission of swisstopo (BA140296). NOTES ON SCALE 29
CHAPTER 01 SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION Soundings mark the depth of water measured at a point with a pole or line weighted by lead and noted by a number on a nautical chart at that point. A spot elevation is a number on a map that shows the position and the altitude of a point above a given datum.
31 I n any system of points, the relationship between measurement and drawing is a direct, scaled translation. The physical point of measurement correlates to a representational mark—a number, a cross, a dot, or a circle on a drawing. In bathymetric and topographic representation, the sounding and the spot elevation are points that denote relative elevation. Spot elevations are points above mean sea level, which is a common, but not universal, datum. Those below are soundings. Points in space and time mark physical and temporal locations within a landscape and are transferred onto paper, or screen, as points on a map or a chart. The resulting constellation reflects both the system of measurement and the complexity of the landform or surface being measured. Points are located and measured systematically by scanning visually, mechanically, or audibly. In cases where the ground is visible, elevations are determined by sight and measured—from mountaintop to mountaintop, river bend to river bend, and built form to built form. Corresponding points are marked and located mathematically through vertical and horizontal triangulation. In cases where the ground is obscured, a predetermined set of rules dictates the surveying approach. For example, the measurements are taken radially at regular intervals from a ship’s anchor point or are taken in a grid circumscribed atop a frozen lake. The geometry of these measurement systems translates to the map or chart drawing. The means of deploying the points becomes an overlay on the landscape, where the system can either converge or diverge with the inherent geographical organization. Thus, when following a shoreline or filling an entire water body with soundings, the physical landscape drives the location. Conversely, with the radial array and the grid, the points represent an independent system superimposed on the land. [FIG. 1.1] Literal geographic representation is pitted against scientific precision, selective editing over complete coverage. The representations are alluring, less for their clear depiction of underwater surfaces than for their potential to reveal and inspire spatial relations. Topography is hard to read through point distribution alone, but the points do uncover the intricacies of the landscape, the relationships between elements, and the corresponding methods of measurement. Spot elevations are often used to describe land in concert with other representational means—leaving the spot to mark only absolute high and low points and key landmarks in a drawing. Spot elevations indicate landscape complexity, with more spots correlating to greater intricacy and variation in the landscape. The point corresponds to the height of a significant feature, and the entire terrestrial landscape can be described
32 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS through their distribution. However, the points are rarely left to stand alone. They are often connected either to form isolines (contours and isobaths [SEE CHAPTER 02]) or to reveal the underlying triangulation. Triangulation is a common surveying technique, used both by the earliest national surveys and by the more recent global positioning systems, to locate the coordinates for features in the landscape by measuring the angle to a point from known points on a baseline. The network of points and triangles is then connected to construct a map of a larger territory. Triangulation continues to be a means to describe landscape surface. While disengaged from the immersive survey of the territory, digital terrain models use triangulated meshes to define complex geometry. The underlying wireframe can be extracted as a means to describe existing and proposed landform. [FIG. 1.8] The outputs of both early computer mapping and contemporary point clouds—a set of data points located within a three-dimensional coordinate system—reveal the plasticity of the point as a representational tool. The density of a field of dots is infinitely variable but can bear a direct relationship to characteristics of the landscape. Limited by the availability of data and the sophistication of printers prior to geographic information systems, or GIS, early geospatial maps could only approximate topography. One method was to create grid cells and use the average elevation to generate a terrain reading. [FIG. 5.11] Each cell was assigned a dot density based on average elevation, and the agglomeration revealed a terrain of tiny pixels. The result yields a field of high and low cells, not spot elevations, and a representation of points rather than lines. The grid cells obfuscate the fluidity of the terrain, but the method tests the limitations of the point as a continuous field to describe geospatial characteristics. With technological advances, the field distribution has reached new representational heights in point-cloud scanning and visualizations. The seemingly infinite number points that can be extracted from scanning either the landscape itself or a three-dimensional model of the ground is stunning. Elevation points do not rest flat on the page but dance three-dimensionally as geospatially located, mathematically determined spots in a landscape. The sounding and the spot elevation have always required translation, enhancement, or augmentation to achieve visual clarity. The shape of the land is not evident in a flat field of points—often equally weighted, drawn as blue or black dots or crosses, or, at rare times, anchors. Points have values associated with them, and only through representational innovation are these numbers converted into a readable topography. Points read easiest as landmarks, peaks or valleys, embedded within a
SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION 33 detailed map or plan, where they are meant to augment information without overwhelming a drawing. Or they are clearly understood as soundings, where the important information to convey is depth at any given point rather than a synthetic reading of a continuous underwater ground plane. Yet, with the point cloud and other field-driven spatial experiments, the point can transcend this limited role and, through threedimensional differentiation and graphic hierarchy, emerge as an alternative reading of surficial properties. Singular precision meets aggregated totality. This chapter explores the representation of the sounding and the spot elevation in their various roles and configurations—from the plan, chart, and map to the dot matrix and the point cloud—exposing the breadth of pointillist techniques across space and time. 1.1 Jill Desimini, Sounding Techniques: San Francisco, Detroit River, Cape Cod, Squam Lake, 2014. After Alexander Dallas Bache [FIG. 1.3], United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers [FIG. 1.5], Washington Hood and Major J. D. Graham [FIG. 1.10], and Bradford Washburn [FIG. 1.6].
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SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION 35
36 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 1.3 37.7166° N, 122.2830° W, Alexander Dallas Bache, Entrance to San Francisco Bay California, 1859. Scale: 1:50,000 (shown at half size). The United States Coast Survey— established by Thomas Jefferson in 1807 and now an office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—is responsible for navigational mapping of America’s oceans, coastal waterways, and Great Lakes. Alexander Dallas Bache ran the Coast Survey from 1843 to 1867, expanding the scientific and geographic reaches of the agency. His coastal cartographic project of describing the coastlines is remarkable, producing some of the finest representations of the landwater interface. For example, the 1859 Entrance to San Francisco Bay California beautifully renders the urban coastline. The spot elevations increase in density at shallower depths, effectively delimiting the extents of navigation while intricately describing the water’s edge. 1.2 ( pp. 34–35 ) 47.1167° N, 9.2000° E, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Animation Still, 2012.
SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION 37 1.4 37.7166° N, 122.2830° W, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Coast Survey, Entrance to San Francisco Bay California, 2009. Scale: 1:40,000 (shown at 1:100,000). San Francisco, through its sea level station monitoring facility, has the longest running continuous sea level record in America (since 1854) and is one of the most documented ports in America. While drawing techniques have advanced, and preoccupations have changed from navigational safety to sea level rise, the distribution of soundings and the articulation of the coastline in this 2009 NOAA map versus its predecessor from 1859 are remarkably consistent. Yet the contemporary version lacks the wonderful enigma of the 1859 map, rendering the land continuously tan and the water in shades of blue and white.
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SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION 39 1.5 42.1829° N, 83.1286° W, United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, Preliminary Chart of Mouth of the Detroit River, 1874. Scale: 1:20,000 (shown at three-quarter size). This chart of the Detroit River is part of the pioneering 1841 Lake Survey, consisting of seventy-six charts, published from 1852 to 1882 in fulfillment of a congressionally mandated hydrographical survey of the northern and northwestern lakes in the United States. The sheer number of soundings on this chart alone speaks to the thoroughness of the scientific endeavor. The entire surface is rendered as a constellation of points, and while the points measure the depth of the water, the representational effect is a reading of the horizontal extent. 1.6 43.7508° N, 71.5316° W, Bradford Washburn, A Chart of Squam Lake, New Hampshire, 1968. Scale: 1:12,500 (shown at half size). Intrepid mapmaker and former director of the Museum of Science, Boston, Bradford Washburn pushed the boundaries of cartographic practice in all his explorations, such as the measurement of Squam Lake in New Hampshire, with a surface area of just under seven acres. The resultant map is remarkable for its gridded distribution of soundings, a reflection of depth measurements taken from fixed positions on the ice when the lake was frozen in winter. This method led to greater accuracy than was achievable by boat and produced a highly unconventional chart, more instrumental for its conservation than its navigational agenda.
40 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 1.7 90.0000° N, 0.0000° E, Future Cities Lab, Aurora, 2009. A true synthesis of cartographic and design process, these drawings represent the fluctuating territorial boundaries of the Arctic while providing the groundwork for possible sites of intervention. They offer a complex reading of the landscape through restrained representational tools—repetitive lines and forms, hatches, vectors—and, most notably, fields of dots. The variation of tone in the dot matrix in Cache yields an understanding of the hidden landscape of oil and gas reserves while the shifting dots and lines in Drift articulate the temporal and ephemeral qualities of buoy displacement.
SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION 41 DRIFT
42 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 1.8 46.0790° N, 8.9287° E, Atelier Girot, AlpTransit San Gottardo SA, Itecsa, Pini Associati Ingegneri, IFEC ingegneria SA, Insertion of the AlpTransit Depot in the Valley of Sigirino, Ticino, Switzerland, 2010. The use of triangulation to describe terrain has resurged with digital modeling. Point-cloud and continuoussurface models are represented as meshes, fabrics of tiny triangles differentiated by slope. The design is nestled into the existing topography, representationally set apart—as a separate overlapping surface full of points—but physically responsive and cohesive. 1.9 46.1105° N, 8.6988° E, Atelier Girot, True Color Point Cloud in Brissage, Ticino, Switzerland, 2013. As a direct critique of the abstraction of plan drawing in landscape architecture, landscape architect Christophe Girot proposes the use of point-cloud models to recapture the precise, local, and culturally specific character of the landscape. The resulting plan is extracted from a point-cloud model but rendered without visualizing the data points. Instead, it uses the underlying, coded points to collapse the distance between the represented and real terrain through a strikingly rich and detailed description of the threedimensional landscape.
SOUNDING / SPOT ELEVATION 43 1.10 41.6889° N, 70.2969° W, Washington Hood and Major J. D. Graham, Map of the Extremity of Cape Cod, 1836. Scale: 1:10,560 (shown at quarter size). The intensity of Graham’s survey of the spiral tip of Cape Cod and associated waters—he triangulated 150 points on land and 606 on water, registered 769 high tides and took 13,119 depth soundings— translates into a remarkably intricate and finely engraved chart. Driven by navigational concerns, the chart details the landscape conditions at the sea bottom, the wave action and the topographical features of the land as visible from the sea. The result is a richly textured drawing, with noteworthy radial segments of sounding depths describing the water’s extents.
44 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 1.11 13.2057° N, 79.0878° E, William Lambton, General Plan of Triangles: An Account of the Trigonometrical Operations in Crossing the Peninsula of India, 1804, plate 4. William Lambton, in the Great Trigonometrical Survey, used triangulation to both locate the geographical features of the country by mathematical means and to determine the curvature of the earth’s surface. To do so, he set up a “grand meridian line” across the continent, beginning a project that would eventually extend over 2,250 kilometers, produce a web of smaller meridians and interconnected triangles, yield an understanding of the material of the earth’s crust, and accurately measure the heights of the Himalayas. Lambton was impressed by the vastness of unmeasured territory and developed his geodesic system of measurement to survey it in a precise manner. The General Plan of Triangles shows his work from Mangalore, India, to Fort St. George, also in India, a distance of roughly 700 kilometers east–west across the southern part of the continent. 1.12 ( p. 45, left ) 12.9833° N, 77.5833° E, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, Baseline Plottings from Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore’s Terrain, 2006. Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha trace Lambton’s triangulation around the Bangalore Baseline [FIG. 1.11] and therefore the location of the key elevated features in the landscape. The baseline—a critical navigational vector—defines the center of the drawing. Sections are cut through each of the points in Lambton’s survey. The drawing unfolds the survey as a journey, describing the process of measurement, the trajectory of bouncing from landmark to landmark, and the importance of the sight line. 1.13 ( p. 45, right ) 33.0453° S, 71.6203° W, Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseño, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Amereida travesías, 1984– 98, and Mapa de América, 1971. The Valparaíso group of architects practiced in three ways: undertaking traditional professional commissions; building experimental works as part of the Open City project in Valparaíso; and through travesías, or pedagogical journeys, throughout Chile and the Americas. The work of the travesías includes the entire experience, from planning to execution, of the trip itself and of any permanent or impermanent projects undertaken along the way. Articulated through triangulation, the inverted continent and the locality become a series of geographical points connected by the lines of the journey, not as lines of measurement but as lines of experience.
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Lines joining points of equal vertical distance above or below a datum. C H A P T E R 0 2 ISOBATH / CONTOUR
47 T he contour line, a member of the isoline family, is the representational staple of topographical description and projection. The line is an abstraction of altitude, connecting points of equal elevation. Nonexistent in the landscape, the contour traces a horizontal slice through topography. In a drawing of terrain—be it a topographic map or a grading plan—contours are spaced at a given vertical interval determined by the scale of the drawing and the intricacies of the depicted landscape. The result is a series of lines, a single-weave fabric depicting the morphological characteristics of the ground. Tight offsets and densely packed lines describe steep slopes, while wide gaps between lines indicate flatness. Commonly thought of as a terrestrial convention, the contour evolved from its aqueous father, the isobath. The first isolines were used in bathymetrical charts to describe the depths of river mouths, inlets, and bays, unseen ground whose whereabouts are crucial for navigational success. Emerging from Dutch and French traditions, these early contours were smoothly abstracted from soundings (SEE CHAPTER 01), creating the impression of a soft, water floor, lightly articulated against the hard edges of the adjacent built environment. The early contour maps of landmasses translated this innovative approach to describing fluvial geomorphology to terrestrial landform. The French were again innovators, producing what is recognized as the earliest contour mapping. While looping, scalloped, and at wide interval, Jean-Louis Dupain-Triel’s 1798–99 Carte de la France depicts a surface with lines circumscribing landmass, drawing form out of fields of spot elevations in a manner devoid of some of the subjectivity of intuitive shading and pictograms. The layers read strongly, as extruded levels, with the distinct shapes of the contours emphasized rather than the mountainous masses they represent. In French, a contour map is a carte en courbes de niveau, or a “map of curves at a given level.” Early contours were highly generalized, but the efficacy and potential of the system was quickly understood. As Swiss cartographer Eduard Imhof noted, “The contour is the most important element in cartographic representation of the terrain and the only one that determines relief forms geometrically.”1 It forms the basis for other modes of representation, including hachures (SEE CHAPTER 03) and shaded relief (SEE CHAPTER 04), as well as the foundation for grading and landform design. Landscape architects manipulate contours on paper and screen to envision, describe, and dictate the moving of earth and material in the field.
48 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS The emphasis on the contour plan as a technical tool to describe and manipulate the surface of the earth remained central in French design culture and technical education. At the École des Ponts et Chaussées, the early pedagogy centered on the drawing of maps, emphasizing that the reading and drawing of the countryside was essential to the engineering profession and that the plan was the basis of all projects.2 Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, chief engineer of parks under Georges Eugène Haussmann and Napoléon III, was trained in this tradition. His work at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont (1867) represented the use of the map, and more specifically the contour plan, as a means to conquer and transform space. Here, the contour becomes a tool to exploit technical mastery, re-envision urban fabric, and mobilize quick construction. By including a contour plan of the park in the publicly distributed series of promotional illustrations, Promenades de Paris, Alphand demonstrated the skill and precision underlying the ambitious Parc des Buttes Chaumont project. [FIG. 2.12] Paired with a rich and dramatic engraving of the park, the contour plan showed the before and after contours, mathematically indicating the cut and fill required for construction. The abstract language of contours may not have been legible to the general consumer, but the impressive drawing bred faith in the technical abilities of the government efforts. Further, Alphand could use the contour calculations to estimate and order materials, facilitating the construction process.3 Grading plans indicating the displacement between existing and proposed contours continue to be used to design and build landforms, with greater precision and automation providing transfer from design vision to constructed landscape. In cartography, the contour has evolved from a highly generalized and expressive line, drawn by connecting a few points of known elevation to a carefully calibrated mathematical articulation of form derived from detailed and accurate surveys. The tools of surveying and representation have allowed for greater precision, challenging cartographers to advance scientific knowledge without alienating themselves from an intimate understanding of the feel, material, and texture of the ground. Increased accuracy of data makes possible further freedom of expression. Similarly, in design practice, the contour has been liberated from its technical chains. After a long period of service, for which the contour was used primarily as a construction tool to execute a design conceived through other means of articulating topography (e.g., spot elevations, shading,
ISOBATH / CONTOUR 49 2.1 40.7823° N, 73.9658° W, Jill Desimini, Contour Techniques: Central Park Lake, 2014. After JeanCharles Adolphe Alphand [FIG. 2.12], OLM et al. [FIG. 2.14], International Hydrographic Organization [FIG. 2.7], and NOAA [FIG. 2.9].
50 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS sections, perspectives, models), the contour line has recently reemerged as a projective element in the creative process. It has become a way of organizing space, of articulating topography as the main driver of a project, and of expressing the integration of site and building. It evokes the qualitative characteristics of the landform it describes through color, form, and gestural means. The representation of the contour began as a thin black line but has embraced a number of techniques throughout history. Like other forms of cartographic conventions, no singular representational system has emerged. Distinctions are often made between existing and proposed contours— dashed and solid, light and dark, noncolored and colored. Index contours, usually assigned to every fifth contour to facilitate legibility, can be darker than intermediate contours. Gradients can be introduced to go from low to high or high to low. Line color can also be used to distinguish material quality—black for rocks, blue for water or glaciers, brown for earthen and vegetated areas. Numbering can appear within the line or between two lines; the number in this case represents the lower elevation value. Hypsometric tints—or color ramps—can fill the contours to further emphasize the topographic progression. In bathymetric conventions, the fill dominates. Older maps espoused a ramp of blues to simulate depth, whereas newer conventions have at times strayed from material verisimilitude to independent schemes—a ROYGBIV rainbow reading from low to high—joining a robust set of thematic heat maps that use the ROYGBIV spectrum to indicate data variations. Each technique achieves different affects [FIG. 2.1]. The overlays of existing and proposed contours allow for the reading of the design transformation, integrating time into the drawing. A blue and tan ramp creates a clear distinction between topographic and bathymetric elevations in a subtle color scheme. The grayscale and ROYGBIV versions do not distinguish between land and water, presenting a continuous surface in tonal and color schemes that lack mimicry and highlight the contoured levels. Despite all the difference and variation, topographic maps across countries often land on dark or reddish brown as the choice color for contours. United States Geological Survey contours are brown; Swiss contours are reddish brown, as are Japanese, Indonesian, Nepalese, Bahraini, Korean, and French, to name a few others (SEE NOTES ON SCALE). Black is the most readily available printing color, but the effect can be harsh. Dark or reddish brown contrasts nicely with black, blue,