FIGURE-GROUND 151 6.12 43.7328° N, 7.4197° E, Xaveer de Geyter Architects, Extension in the Sea, Monaco, 2002. The Belgian design firm Xaveer de Geyter Architects (XDGA) experiments with figure-ground drawings as a way to express architectural intention. For the Extension in the Sea project, XDGA addresses the condition of extreme urban density by extending the city beyond the coast and into the sea. The project is presented through four possible scenarios: the capes and bay, the grid and central pool, the Janus Island, and the archipelago. Each version alters the coastline, either through the filling of land along the edge or through the construction of islands. The plan drawings render built form and water in black, fill on a white ground with black contour lines. Centered on the further occupation of the sea, the representational technique aligns the water with inhabitation, rendering the sea as architectural space.
152 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 6.13 43.8820° N, 11.1003° E. Bernardo Secchi, Goffredo Serrini, Paola Viganò, Claudio Zagaglia with StudioPratoPrg, Prato general plan, survey: “the block-notes”, 1993–96. Italian urbanists Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò’s “block-notes” drawing is a richly annotated urban map articulating use, access, and mobility. The buildings, streetscapes, and open spaces are dimensioned and characterized both quantifiably and qualitatively, with entrances, directions of movement, widths, materials, functions, and status noted. Existing conditions and future plans are included. The drawing is overlaid on a 1:2,000 scale city plan, and the distinctions between figure and ground are blurred. The coding is complex rather than binary, with the negative space—the color of the paper that remains—being the space of no information.
FIGURE-GROUND 153 6.14 40.7145° N, 74.0071° W, Herman Bollmann, New York, 1962. In his 1962 map for the New York World’s Fair, German cartographer and graphic artist Herman Bollmann merged the tradition of the bird’seye perspective with the precision afforded by aerial photography. He shot over sixty-five thousand photographs in order to create the map, nearly seventeen thousand from the air. The map successfully meets the challenge of portraying the high-rises of the city en masse without obscuring the ground plane. The incredible detail draws the eye in from above, stimulating the imagination required to occupy the streets and buildings below. The harmonious color scheme and fidelity to the ground experience allow for parallels with the work of Imhof and Hadid.
154 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 6.15 38.7138° N, 9.1394° W, Global Arquitectura Paisagista, Campo das Cebolas, 2012. The Global Arquitectura Paisagista entry to a city-organized competition to enhance the historic Campo das Cebolas square along the shore of the Rio Tejo in Lisbon evokes the palimpsest. The proposal engages multiple layers of physical construction and social activism that have transformed the space from beach to constructed edge to urban margin. The design reveals the subterranean history of the site by exposing an eighteenth-century harbor wall and uses it to structure three distinct urban platforms. The drawing juxtaposes the urban plan with an orthographic view from the river, showing the sectional reading of the project and the locations where the historic walls are integrated into the design proposal. The drawing highlights the provocative merger of past and future, collapsing and conflating different time periods by using the very same graphic language Carlos Mardel and Eugénio dos Santos used in proposals for reconstruction of Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755. open space in green, hardscape in white, sidewalks and plazas in yellow, and water bodies in blue. In its most pure form, the figureground is a binary drawing with only black and white fills. Here, the binary distinctions are many: public/private, land/water, softscape/hardscape, vertical/horizontal, surficial/ subterranean. As a composite of many layers of figure and ground, the drawing extends and possibly exceeds the categorization. 6.16 52.5231° N, 13.3721° E, Andreas Matschenz and Julius Straube, Ubersichtsplan von Berlin, 1903. Scale: 1:4,000 (shown at half size). This beautiful atlas, a map series of forty-four sheets covering the entire city of Berlin, was a collaboration between the cartographer Andreas Matschenz and publisher Julius Straube. The map is based on detailed surveys from 1876 and shows building footprints with courtyards and outbuildings, transportation systems, and parks. The map is keyed in rich, muted colors, with public buildings marked in light brown, private buildings in dark brown, vegetated
FIGURE-GROUND 155
A simplified columnar diagram relating a succession of named lithostratigraphic units from a particular area to the subdivisions of geologic time. CHAPTER 07 STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN
157 T he stratigraphic column is both data visualization and cartographic key. It accompanies the planar geologic map as a diagram used to order and date rock units and as an index to identify those units on the map. Color is fundamental to a stratigraphic column. It is the near universal system of coding. [FIG. 7.1] The wide range of rich colors is alluring, but the transition between the diagram and map is difficult for the untrained eye. The colors reveal the unseen, and, for the nongeologist, the unfamiliar with very few significant landmarks for orientation. William Smith, an English canal digger, is credited with the creation of the first stratified geologic map, a hand-painted, 105-by-74-inch masterpiece of England, Wales, and Scotland completed in 1815. [FIG. 7.4] Smith made two crucial observations: undulating subsurface rocks occurred in the same order in sequential layers that stretched clear across the country; and the fossils embedded within the rock layers could be used as a dating device. Further, Smith devised the stratigraphic column as a representational tool for depicting these horizontal layers, rendering visible a foreign subterranean world. For the palette, he chose a system of colors that mimic the actual colors of the rocks, with the intensity varying according to relative depth. Drawings have standards, yet there is no one universal representational convention; as long as there is a key and the drawing is legible, experimentation is welcome. In fact, by eschewing norms, such as blue water and green vegetation, different, often productive, readings arise. The same can be said of the color systems for identifying lithostratigraphic layers on geological maps. Four rivaling schemes yield four different readings of the geologic strata of a given landscape. Two are mimetic systems, based either on the physical characteristics of the rocks—light tan for sand, blue for magnesian limestone, and dark gray for coal measures—or the lithology—blues for limestones, reds for granites, purples and greens for igneous layers, and pale yellows for alluviums and surficial deposits. The third, adopted by many of the United States Geological Society’s maps, relates color to the stratigraphic age of the rock, representing geological time: younger rocks have paler colors and older rocks suffer darker shades. The last is rogue, basing the colors on aesthetic principles in order to clearly articulate rock outcroppings and please the eye. A great example is the graphically notable Japanese map of the Miyake Jima volcano. [FIG. 7.6] Geologic maps are just one type of subsurface investigation. Soil and infrastructural maps are two others with great relevance to landscape
158 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS architecture and its intersection with cartography. Landscape architects work from the ground up, and this ground has thickness and depth. Subsurface maps, as representational tools, collapse this depth to uncover key relationships between above- and below-ground conditions. In the case of geology, a connection is formed between surface morphology and subsurface layers. Characteristics of soil can be understood with land cover. Infrastructural maps forge links between underground support systems and the built environment. These parallels are fundamental to design. They define parameters for imagining alternative scenarios. They reveal the logics between above and below ground and point to a thickened medium of design that serves to organize human occupation of the landscape. The ground is both a constraint—with infrastructure and soil guiding interventions—and an opportunity to restructure. By altering the subsurface, the surface changes. Relational information is layered through drawing, collapsing vertical elevations and subject matter to explain functionality and inform design decisions. For example, the Travaux de Paris, published in 1889 under the direction of engineer Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, exposes a century’s worth of public-works progress in Paris, placing underground water and sewer systems on city plans. On the Égouts de Paris au 1er Janvier 1878, bright blue and red lines show the impressive growth of the system over twenty-three years, rendering the underground sewer lines boldly against the fainter surface roads and parks. [FIG. 7.11] Here, the places of alignment and misalignment are evident, as well as the changing density with the outward development of the city. The city center is older and more chaotic, with slippages between streets and infrastructure, whereas the outer rings of the city show a clear logic of planned expansion with greater alignment above and below ground. Time is implied within the patterns of infrastructure deployment and made evident through the organization of the drawings. Spatial layers are edited and collapsed into a single drawing, while the atlas is organized with different systems, such as sewer, water, and roads, with different phases for implementation, including 1789, 1855, 1878, and 1889, each on separate plates. The drawings employ both the overlay method and the series as tools for collapsing vertical distance, functional characteristics, and time. Increasingly, urban-landscape projects are forced to contend with difficult sites embedded with deep tangles of underground services, complicated systems of past and present use that extend far beyond
STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN 159 individual property boundaries. These sites reflect the traces of their previous geologic, material, topographic, and programmatic histories. As the design disciplines engage these rich and deep layers, stratigraphic representational methods have great relevance. In order for design drawings to operate with the ingenuity of subsurface cartography, an orderly and coded system of columns, colors, and overlays is often necessary. This chapter uncovers different representations of subsurface conditions, placing the geologic in dialogue with the infrastructural, the extractive with the accumulative, the inventive with the derivative, the compressed with the exploded, and the comprehensive with the cut away. 7.1 Jill Desimini, Stratigraphic Column Palettes, 2014.
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162 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 7.2 ( pp. 160–61 ) 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Animation Still, 2012. 7.3 25.0333° N, 121.5333° E, Mosbach Paysagistes, Taichung Jade Ecopark Competition Drawing, 2012. Scale: 1:2,500 (shown at half size). The winning design for the Taichung Jade Ecopark—a project to convert a former military site in the middle of downtown Taichung to a public amenity—by Mosbach Paysagistes with Phillippe Rahm Architectes and Ricky Liu & Associates Architecture + Planners, focuses on microclimate as a way to organize design. Hydrological conditions drive topographic manipulation. The ground surface and depth are altered to promote groundwater infiltration, take advantage of potential cooling breezes, and address adjacent sources of noise and air pollution. The park comprises layers of porous materials designed to hold, absorb, release, and celebrate water. Topography, vegetation, dehumidifiers, and fountains change the ambient temperature throughout the park, promoting biodiversity and accommodating a wide range of human activity in both the wet and dry seasons. The plan drawing represents the project as a series of layers, highlighting the stratigraphy present in the designed lithosphere.
STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN 163 7.4 54.0000° N, 4.0000° W, William Smith, A Geological Map of England and Wales and Part of Scotland, 1815. Reproduced by permission of the British Geological Survey. © NERC. All rights reserved. CP14/085. Often cited as the first map to show geological strata, William Smith’s map—an impressive detailing of stratigraphic layers—documents his important observations that subsurface rock layers occur in a given order, that seams of coal and chalk have regular intervals, and that these layers can be dated using fossils. Smith laboriously documented his findings as color-coded planar slices on his map and keyed each one as an ordered stratigraphic column— a convention that persists today. While color conventions vary across cultures and among cartographers, Smith opted for verisimilitude: his cartographic colors match the rocks themselves, with the hue gradient representing relative depth across the layer. A DELINEATION OF THE STRATA OF ENGLAND AND WALES. WITH FAST OF SCOTLAND:
164 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 7.5 43.5000° N, 110.7500° W, J. D. Love and Howard F. Albee, Geologic Map of the Jackson Quadrangle, Teton County, Wyoming, 1972. Scale: 1:24,000 (shown at full size). American geologist J. D. Love is a central figure in the history of geological cartography, known for his exemplary fieldwork, surveys, and maps of his native Wyoming. Educated at the University of Wyoming and Yale University, Love worked for the United States Geological Survey. He was commissioned in the 1950s to create the first statewide geological map of Wyoming, standardizing data and representation conventions across a large and complex territory. His Jackson Hole map is considered one of his most significant accomplishments. Historian Alex Maltman elaborates: “The Precambrian rocks that make the spectacular Teton Mountains, back-drop to many a movie; the complicated, still active tectonics; and the intricate terraces of the Snake River have all been subjected to Love’s unrivaled abilities and beautifully recorded in a series of 1:24,000 sheets.”1 —— 1Alex Maltman, Geological Maps: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1998), 213. 7.6 ( p. 166 ) 34.0790° N, 139.5290° E, Geological Survey of Japan, Geological Map of Miyake Jima Volcano, 2006. Scale: 1:25,000 (shown at half size). This vibrantly colored, aesthetically remarkable geological representation of the Miyake Jima stratovolcano compiles historic eruption data with geologic and lithological studies. The effect is a visual depiction of the physical transformations of the volcano through time. The recorded eruption events are noted as far back as the ninth century, with the lithological information dating back to the Pleistocene epoch. The color families, chosen for their visual complementarity, are used to register lava flows and ash and debris deposits by epoch. 7.7 ( p. 167 ) 9.7000° N, 20.0000° W, K. A. Howard, United States Geological Survey (USGS) with NASA, Geologic Map of the Crater Copernicus, 1975. Scale: 1:250,000 (shown at half size). Using images from satellite photography, the USGS began geological mapping of the moon in the early 1960s. From these images and the data collected by the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, a formation timeline and stratigraphic system was established. Topographical and geological data was determined by measuring the reflectivity (albedo) of the surface registered in the satellite photographs. Differences in readings indicated morphological variations: craters, basins, lava plains, faults, and mountains. The colors—magenta, orange, red, gray— correspond to various structures (crater floor, wall, rim) and the degrees of pooled lava melt.
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170 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 7.8 ( pp. 168–69, top ) 40.0000° N, 119.5000° W, Clarence King, Nevada Basin, 1876. Clarence King, the first director of the USGS, was in charge of the pioneer surveys of the 40th parallel from the 120th to the 105th meridian, including this area from Argenta, Nevada, to Lake Tahoe (then called Pyramid Lake), California. The resulting atlas includes some of the finest examples of American geological and topographical cartography. The rock types are overlaid on the surface topography, with its water and mud lakes. The hues are earthen—reds, browns, oranges, ochres—but do not reflect the natural colors of the rocks they represent. Similar colors signify rock age and type, with the blue hues representing rocks of the Carboniferous period. 7.9 ( pp. 168–69, bottom ) 39.3097° N, 119.6486° W, George F. Becker, Comstock Mine Maps, nos. III, IV, V, and VI, 1882. This map of mining shafts and tunnels departs from the stratigraphic column as a representational tool and uses colors to indicate depth. The sequence of colors corresponds to 100 feet of depth and repeats between 1,500 feet and 3,000 feet. Analogous to the contour, the color coding of the subgrade infrastructure reads as horizontal slices through the continuous system of interconnected tunnels and shafts. The technique both abstracts the complex information and represents it as a weblike entanglement, presenting the mining apparatus adjacent to the material of extraction. FURNISHINGS 1. Concrete Vehicle Barrier Wall 2. Stainless Steel Guardrail 3. Emergency Phone 4. Timber Benches 5. Uplighting 6. Area Lighting 7. Concrete Benches and Signage 8. Fountain Rocks 9. Bicycle Racks SURFACE 10. Power Distribution Panel 11. WIFI Router 12. Wall Lighting 13. Bench Lighting 14. Lighting Conduit 15. Power/data Conduit 16. Power/data Receptacles 17. 200A Event Power 18. Map 19. Tent Baseplate Connection 20. Precast Concrete Paving 21. Asphalt Block Paving 22. Drain Grate 23. Potable Water Plumbing 24. Fountain Sub-base 25. Fountain Water Nozzles 26. Utility Castings UTILITIES 27. Water Main 28. Electrical Ductbank 29. Electrical Manhole 30. Telecom Ductbank 31. Storm Sewer Drain 32. Drain Catchbasin 33. Chilled Water Lines 34. Steam Distribution 35. Fountain Vault 36. Gas Main FOUNDATIONS 37. Vehicle Barrier Wall 38. Emergency Phone 39. Trench Drain Base 40. Trough Drain Base 41. Lightpole 42. Tent Footing 43. Tent Pier 44. Bench CONTEXT 45. Science Center 46. Harvard Yard 47. Tanner Fountain 48. Cambridge Street Underpass 49. Harvard Square 50. Quincy Street
STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN 171 7.10 42.3756° N, 71.1233° W, Stoss Landscape Urbanism, The Thick 2D (with a nod to Stan Allen), The Plaza at Harvard University, 2012. The exploded axonometric of the Plaza at Harvard University reveals the complexity of the structural and infrastructural layers of the project. Sitting above a vehicular tunnel and an entanglement of civic and university utilities, the plaza surface is bounded by constraints. The subsurface dimension guides the spatial distribution of elements across the surface. The location of ground punctures for trees, benches, lights, tent supports, drainage; the depth and weight of the designed elements; and the insertion of new utilities are orchestrated by the underground network. The use of the exploded, layered drawing is instrumental as a tool of communication, analysis, and project development. The rendering of extruded, color-coded utility lines draws parallels with the Comstock mine maps and the Paris infrastructural maps. and 1878 in red. The collapse of the vertical space between the physical features of the surficial city and its underground support structure makes the interdependency of the two evident. Both time and function are highlighted through simple and powerful representational techniques. 7.11 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, Les Travaux de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1889), plate VII. The urban subterranean zone is marked by its geological strata and its infrastructural network. Les Travaux de Paris is an atlas that focuses on the latter as a means to describe the technical advancement and modernization for the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1889. The plate shown illustrates the sewer system in 1878, identifying those sewers existing in 1855 in blue and those constructed between 1855 ÉGOUTS DE PARIS AU 1ER. JANVIER 1878. Les traits bleus représentent les égouts existant au 1er Janvier 1855. Les traits roiges, ceux quiont été constraits de 1855 au 1er Janvier 1878. AU 1ER JANVIER 1878.
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STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN 173 7.12 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Service Géologique des Mines, Paris et Ses Environs, 1890. Scale: 1:40,000 (shown at half size). While Les Travaux de Paris focuses on the subterranean infrastructural network, this incredibly detailed geological map of the city from the same period correlates the layers of underground rock with the extents of urbanization above. Structured around the meandering Seine River, the map shows known, invented, and hidden geological contours, fold lines, fossil sites, and color-coded rock types that roughly correspond to their natural appearance. It also shows roads, buildings, fields, and vegetation in great detail. The geological information is coded and requires a legend, while the rendering of surface habitation reads without translation: the roads have thickness, the vegetation has texture, the building footprints are filled in, and the topographic relief is hatched.
174 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 7.13 42.3586° N, 71.0567° W, Charles Eliot, Map of the Metropolitan District of Boston, 1893. Scale: 1:62,500 (shown at half size). The landscape architect Charles Eliot and the journalist Sylvester Baxter conceived of and promoted a system of interconnected parks and parkways ringing the city of Boston. The Map of the Metropolitan District of Boston of 1893 delineated the existing public reservations in green and those proposed by Eliot in orange. The map was printed, folded, and attached to Eliot’s bound report to the Metropolitan Park Commission. In this copy, the color registration 7.14 ( p. 175, top ) 39.8643° N, 74.8225° W, University of Pennsylvania Center for Ecological Research and Design (Ian McHarg and Narendra Juneja), Medford: Performance Requirements for the Maintenance of Social Values Represented by the Natural Environment of Medford Township, NJ, 1974. The Medford project—with Ian McHarg as principal investigator, Narendra Juneja as project director, and the entire science faculty (six members) of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning as consultants—was an is slightly off, but the correlation between the topographical, geological, and hydrological systems—included as part of the base map—and the proposed park system is evident. Eliot was an early advocate of the overlay method of representation and design. From printed resources and extensive fieldwork, he collected and mapped many layers of information in order to locate the ideal properties for the parkland expansion. idea to preserve the bucolic Pinelands town of Medford, New Jersey, and its environment and to fortify it against sprawling suburban development. Juneja, a landscape architect and McHarg’s close colleague, authored the report and produced a set of beautifully drawn maps. The soils map (Ron Hanawalt was the consulting soil scientist), drawn in rich, earthen tones, was accompanied by a detailed charting of the soil characteristics: type, permeability, texture, composition, relationship to the water table, and use value.
STRATIGRAPHIC COLUMN 175 7.15 ( bottom ) 49.8333° N, 88.5000° W; 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E; 40.0000° N, 119.5000° W; 25.3450° S, 131.0361° E (clockwise from top left), OneGeology Maps, 2014. OneGeology is an online, freely accessible, easy-to-use mapping platform that aggregates and presents geological data and maps globally. The platform provides access to maps across political boundaries. Instead of again attempting the impossible universal map [FIG. 2.7], the platform is a singular georeferenced repository of different maps, with different scales, data thresholds, levels of resolution, stratigraphy, and color systems. These four examples represent four different zoom scales, from largest in the top left (1:350,000) to smallest in the bottom right (1:4,000,000). They also highlight the geopolitical differences, as well as the changes in mapping trends over decades [compare the top right with FIG. 7.12 and bottom left with FIG. 7.8].
A drawing cut along a predetermined line perpendicular to the plan view to reveal elevation, depth, and structural and material composition. An orthographic view of an object taken from the position of a cutting plane to describe internal organization. CHAPTER 08 CROSS SECTION
177 T he cross section is both a signature feature of the geological map and a fundamental type of orthographic drawing in architecture and its cognate disciplines. The sectional view complements the plan while affording an understanding of material and structural relationships. In one view, sections trace a given line through a landscape, articulating the rise and fall of the topography through the known and unknown qualities of the material above and below. In geological cartography, the cross section and map are two representations of the same spatial condition: the distribution of rock layers. The section affords a more striking depiction of the rock-bed geometry, including dip, thickness, and depth, while the map describes the broader organization. Sections are used both as tools of discovery, to find relationships, and as tools of measurement, to determine accurate dimensions. While the section is usually derived from the planar map, in some instances the planar view is extrapolated from surveyed sections. Taken together, the section and the plan, both two-dimensional projections, describe the three-dimensional subsurface condition. The stratigraphic column (SEE CHAPTER 07) provides the key and color scheme for both. The direction of the section-cut line is important and is best taken perpendicular to the rock strike or other depicted element to reveal structural and material characteristics while minimizing distortion. The sections often focus solely on geologic properties, describing what occurs below the surface without the buildings and landscapes that sit atop geologic dips and folds. However, when taken through urban conditions, the high elevations—the hilly landmarks—are unmistakable. [FIG. 8.3] Sections in the design disciplines share remarkable similarities with their geologic counterparts. Both serve the dual purpose of reconnaissance and measure. These reveal thickness and structure and more often result from rather than generate the plan. The section describes tectonics and adjacencies, explaining the internal structure and the longitudinal variation of a landscape. The relationship between surface and subsurface, explored in plan in the previous chapter, reads more directly in section. At the detail level, the section can describe the different under- and aboveground material properties. The two conditions can be starkly distinguished by emphasizing the differences between layers or blended together to read as one thickened ground. Elevation information is included to reference the physical conditions beyond the section cut, to give the slice a compressed thickness and better situate it within the landscape. In geology, the block diagram, an axonometric fragment of terrain, functions to give the
178 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS section depth. Design employs parallel projection and series to describe a locality and articulate movement across a landscape. The transect also functions to describe a trajectory across a terrain. Two figures, Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt and Scottish urbanist Patrick Geddes, argued for the broader use of the section to describe regions, as a vector from mountain to sea. This conceptual line holds relevance for geobotany, planning, and design alike. A tool of the geographer, who used the linear traverse as a means to understand new territory, as both a line struck across a map and a physical terrain, the transect represents both elevational difference and horizontal extent. Sections can be drawn through expressive line work alone or augmented with black fills, coded colors, textures, hatches, and raster imagery. [FIG. 8.1] In order to provide more expansive readings of terrain or linkages across a landscape, both design and the geological sciences employ the serial section. In these instances, plans and sections are collapsed, especially when the sections are placed in situ, combining the two orthographic views into a single image. This chapter explores the provocative linkages between design and cartography through sectional pairings, cutting through the gamut of representational tools and typologies in order to merge structural, temporal, and material qualities below and aboveground.
CROSS SECTION 179 8.1 40.6975° N, 73.9992° W, Jill Desimini, Cross-Section Techniques: Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2014. After Michael van Valkenburgh Associates [FIG. 8.9], John Claudius Loudon [FIG. 8.8], Vogt Landscape Architects [FIG. 8.13], Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò [FIG. 8.12], and Mosbach Paysagistes [FIG. 8.7].
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182 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 8.4 ( p. 183, bottom ) 25.0333° N, 121.5333° E, George F. Becker, Vertical CrossSections of the Lode, 1882. The vertical sections of the Comstock Lode, a deposit of silver ore, were prepared by George F. Becker for United Stated Geological Survey (USGS) director Clarence King. The 1880–81 survey of the lode expanded upon previous studies and revealed the true scale of the famous silver-ore deposit. The drawings created under Becker’s supervision aimed for reproduction “with absolute fidelity” and included the emerging constructed tunnels and shafts within the mine network. [FIG. 7.8] 8.2 ( pp. 180–81 ) 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Animation Still, 2012. 8.3 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Service de la Carte Géologique de la France, Paris, 1953. Horizontal scale: 1:50,000, vertical scale: 1:2,500 (geologic section shown at quarter size). The geologic cross section on this 1953 map of Paris merges cultural and geological references, reading like a city skyline composed of rock strata. The peak of Montmartre stands prominently between the Boulevard Rochechouart and Porte de Clignancourt. The actual height is modest at 130 meters, but the significant vertical exaggeration allows for the understanding of the vertical variation in the strata and the cultural implications of the geological layers.
CROSS SECTION 183 COUPE GÉOLOCIQUE DE RAGNEIIX Á PIERREEITTE PAP MONTMAPTDE
184 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 8.5 12.9667° N, 77.5667° E, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, Pettah 2 Plot, 2006. The serial and planimetric sections of the Pettah site in Bangalore, India (a fortified town outside the historic fort), respond to previous site surveys, drawing heavily on measurements taken by the British army, led by General Lord Cornwallis, conducted during the British seizure of the site. The drawing marks the center of the Pettah with a compass overlaid atop the sections and references key access points depicted in the Cornwallis survey. The planimetric quality of the serial sections allows the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the landscape to be read simultaneously. The traverse, marked on the left side of the image, implies a progression across the city, reinforcing the idea of the series as a physical promenade (SEE CHAPTER 09). [FIG. 8.14] 8.6 45.8336° N, 6.8650° E, Rudolf Staub, Der Bau der Alpen: Blatt 2: Westalpen, 1926. Rudolf Staub, a Swiss petrographer and mountain climber, produced a series of twenty-five cross sections— arranged on two sheets—of the complex nappes (large bodies, or sheets, of rock that have been moved a distance of two kilometers or more from their original position by faulting or folding) in the Alps region. The sections reveal the structural formation of the range, describing the geological convergences that shape it. The interplay of tectonic layers is invisible on the surface but can be rendered through the sequence of sectional slices. Arranging the sections across the entire sheet allows the plan and the three-dimensional nature of the entire range to read through the series.
CROSS SECTION 185 R.STAUB DER BAU DER ALPEN BLTT 21 WESTALPEN
186 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 8.7 48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Bernardo Secchi Paola Viganò, The Porous City, 2009. The paired sectional drawings of the Italian urbanists Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò’s proposal for the Le Grand Paris project reveal the hydrological and land-use parameters driving the design. The black and red series describes the relationship between the extensive regional river system, highlighted in red, and the topographical relief. The planning concept works to reveal the presence of the water cycle in the city and improve the quality and retention of water in the post-Kyoto metropolis. The color-coded, stratigraphic column–like sections describe the changing land use across the greater conurbation. Both sections reinforce the notion of the Paris of the future as a “porous city” capable of effectively absorbing water, nutrients, and people and of promoting sustained health for the region.
CROSS SECTION 187 carrière quarry bati built historique de l’urbanisation pre 1858 pre-1858 urbanization grand-ensemble large development bati generique generic building pavillionaire main building villes nouvelles pavillionaire main buildings in new towns zones industrielles et zones d’activités économiques industrial zones and economic activity zones zones équipement supply zones nature nature broussailles scrub land carrière quarry bati built historique de l’urbanisation pre 1858 pre-1858 urbanization grand-ensemble large development bati generique generic building pavillionaire main building villes nouvelles pavillionaire main buildings in new towns zones industrielles et zones d’activités économiques industrial zones and economic activity zones zones équipement supply zones nature nature broussailles scrub land forêt forest marais, tourbière marsh, bog prairie prairie rocher éboulis rock scree sable gravier sand and gravel vigne, verger vines and vineyards carrière quarry bati built historique de l’urbanisation pre 1858 pre-1858 urbanization grand-ensemble large development bati generique generic building pavillionaire main building villes nouvelles pavillionaire main buildings in new towns zones industrielles et zones d’activités économiques industrial zones and economic activity zones zones équipement supply zones nature nature broussailles scrub land forêt forest marais, tourbière marsh, bog prairie prairie rocher éboulis rock scree sable gravier sand and gravel vigne, verger vines and vineyards surface eau surface water tronçon cours d’eau streams carrière quarry bati built historique de l’urbanisation pre 1858 pre-1858 urbanization grand-ensemble large development bati generique generic building pavillionaire main building villes nouvelles pavillionaire main buildings in new towns zones industrielles et zones d’activités économiques industrial zones and economic activity zones zones équipement supply zones nature nature broussailles scrub land forêt forest marais, tourbière marsh, bog prairie prairie rocher éboulis rock scree sable gravier sand and gravel vigne, verger vines and vineyards surface eau surface water tronçon cours d’eau streams
188 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS EMBANKMENTS sECTIONS FIG1. PL.IX FIG2. FIG 5. FIG 6. FIG4. FIG 3.
CROSS SECTION 189 8.8 John Claudius Loudon, Observations on the Formation and Management of Useful and Ornamental Plantations: On the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening; and on Gaining and Embanking Land from Rivers or the Sea (Edinburgh: Constable, 1804), plate IX. John Claudius Loudon, a selfdescribed landscape planner, produced a number of popular texts on the art of landscape design. His texts were illustrated, depicting exemplary landscape construction. Plate IX depicts various figures of sea walls and embankments shown in section. The hatches and annotations describe the distinctions between man-made and natural materials, the compaction levels, and the crucial design components. The palette is limited but efficient and effective. The side-by-side comparison of various construction types allows the differences to read much like contemporary sheets of construction drawings, where similar elements are detailed together and referenced to plans and sections to show location. [FIG. 8.9] on subgrade). The sectional view provides a multilayered understanding of both existing (highways) and new (piers and promenades) infrastructure while marking the changing environments below these elevated elements: the tidal flux levels and the circulation. 8.9 40.6975° N, 73.9992° W, Michael van Valkenburgh Associates, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2008. The construction sections of Pier 5 in Brooklyn Bridge Park express the topographic sequence from the East River to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It shows the relationship of elements (the picnic peninsula extending into the river and giant sound-attenuating Furman Hill next to the busy highway) and the material composition of the constructed ground (concrete decking on piers, fill on existing subgrade, bituminous concrete on aggregate, and planting medium
190 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 8.10 1.4692° S, 78.8175° W, Alexander von Humboldt, Humboldt Distribution of Plants in Equinoctial America: According to Elevation above the Level of the Sea, 1854. Alexander von Humboldt wrote frequently about the need for an integrated global perspective on ecology and illustrated his views with images of the richly intertwined ecological networks he encountered in the tropics. His early observations in Europe (noted first at the volcano on Tenerife, the largest and most populous of the Canary Islands) and further, more thorough observations in South America revealed new patterns of vegetation zones in relation to geology, topography, and climate. This exaggerated, iconic section of ecotones within the Mount Chimborazo region in Ecuador provides a perfect graphic frame to relate vegetal information and climate zones through the clever juxtaposition of text and image. 8.11 0.2186° S, 78.5097° W, Felipe Correa, The Section as a Tool: A Regional Framework for Alexander von Humboldt’s Avenue of the Volcanoes, 2004. Scale: approx. 1:30,000 (shown at half size). The Section as a Tool, as the name suggests, is an effort to establish the relevance of the section as an urban-design apparatus, one that better addresses the relationship of topography and urbanization than the ubiquitous plan. San Francisco de Quito—a city in Ecuador located ten thousand feet above sea level and located within the Ecuadorian sierras that Alexander von Humboldt called the Avenue of the Volcanoes— is the testing ground. The sequence of sections through the mountainous region mark the operations of cut and fill required to level the ground for human occupation.
CROSS SECTION 191
192 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS DITCHES AND POOLS QUATERNARY DUNE HINTERLAND QUATERNAR Y LIMESTONE CLIFF sECONDARY QUATERNARY QUATERNARY DRY MOORS WET MOORS QUATERNARY DUNE FIXATION FOREST QUATERNAR Y WHITE DUNES sECONDARY FOREST OF PUBESCENT OAK tERTIARY WET MEADOW tHE FIVE GARDENS IN REPRESENT LANDSCAPES ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE gARONNE. ARRANGED ACCORDING TO A DUAL PROGRESSION THRAUGH GEOLLGICAL TIME AND THROUGH THE CHANGING PATTERNS OF PLANT FORMATIONS WITH THEIR FLOISTIC ACCOMPANIMENTS, FROM THE RICHEST SCIL TO NO SIL. tHE SIX GARDENS REPRESENT LANDSCAPES ON THE LEFT BANK OF THE gARONNE. ARRANGED ACCORDING TO A TOPOGRAPHIC SECTION INLAND FROM THE OCEAN WITH THE GRADUAL DISAPPEARANCE OF SEA SAND WHICH GIVES WAY TO MOOR SAND. mIDDLE tERTIARY QUATERNARY OPEN GREEN DRY MEADOW
CROSS SECTION 193 8.12 44.8386° N, 0.5783° W, Mosbach Paysagistes, Bordeaux Botanical Garden: Sections of the Environment Gallery, 2000–2. The Bordeaux Botanical Gardens is a 4.8-hectare site designed as research facility, conservatory, laboratory, and community garden organized by topography and microclimate. The superimposed sections allow for the topographical shifts to register, and the shifts themselves reveal material stratification. The sections are organized to show the ecological transformation of the environment from sea to moor, the corresponding layers of geological epochs, and the responsive vegetation patterns governed by the different soil conditions. 8.13 51.5082° N, 0.1001° W, Vogt Landscape Architects, Tate Modern, 2001. The vegetation is hand-drawn with black ink, the most visceral and effective technique for the designers to quickly communicate the qualitative characteristics of foliage. The results are intricate and abstract sections that demonstrate the relative lightness and heaviness of the vegetation as well as its connection to a thickened ground.
194 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS 8.14 51.0915° N, 2.4908° W, Vogt Landscape Architects, Hadspen House Estate: Shape of a Walk, 2007–8. Scale: 1:25,000 (shown at half size). The Hadspen House Estate sections focus on the walker’s perspective. The central red line represents the route, while the section length corresponds to the walker’s viewshed. The distance seen is the distance mapped. Thus, the section from the low point is short, and the section from the high point is long. The topography is reflected through the drawing as the sections wax and wane along the undulating route. Topography and experience are not disparate elements but continuously acting upon one another.
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Any elongated continuous mark or discontinuous series of marks (as a line of dots) on a map that serves as a sign for some geographical phenomenon or concept. CHAPTER 09 LINE SYMBOL
197 T he definition of line symbol is broad and can be generalized as the cartographic term for line type, where the line type acts as emblematic of another element or quality. In cartography, the line is used for many things, including hachures and contours (SEE CHAPTERS 02 AND 03), boundaries, borders, property lines, rivers, infrastructure, and, finally, routes. This chapter focuses on the latter, on the line as an itinerant device. Lines are translated into routes for navigation, transit, and travel. They are generalized, approximating lengths and curves, depending on the scale of the drawing. They not only connect precise points but also tie together relational elements. Lines represent both physical features and distances between places. The line typology describes a hierarchy of physical presence and character in the landscape. The density of lines alone can reveal patterns of settlement and urbanization, while choices of type encode information. For example, roads shown in continuous fine lines and railroads shown in broken lines suggest the continuous influence of roads and the discontinuous importance of rail.1 The thickness of the line, too, is embedded with information about use, profile, material, distance, speed, and time. In route maps, the physical depiction of the ground is thus overlaid with a temporal narrative. This often implies a contrast between maps created from aerial images and those that emerge from a close relationship between mapmaker and terrain. The data collected differs when it is processed remotely than when measurements are taken on foot and sketches are drawn in the field (SEE CHAPTER 05). Maps designed for users traveling at greater speeds and with views mediated by a frame are also functionally different from maps or drawings that include (and depend on) a wider set of perceptual qualities. In situ observation and mapmaking are evident in the cases of the survey and the guided walk. These typologies merge the detail of the physical landscape with that of the narrative. Both phenomenological and material experience are recorded and made legible through the drawing. By contrast, maps intended to be used from the road, train, or air tend to highlight features that can be grasped quickly and from great distances, such as mountaintops, shorelines, and key points of navigation. Lines have lengths and positions but lack area.2 In the mapping of geographic elements, however, lines represent entities without dimension— boundaries, property lines, ship and bus routes—as well as those with dimension—roads, rivers, dredge channels, rails. In the latter case, changes in scale reveal the areas of the features the line represents. While the data
198 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS layer may be visualized as a line, zooming reveals a thickened landscape. On a map, the road is a line, but it has a dimension and right-of-way, a spatial territory evaded by the line symbol but included within the classified data set. What is merely a hairline on a map gains measurable and legible dimension in the architectural plan. Detailed surveys, guides, and plans celebrate human presence in the landscape. In contrast to totalizing views from above, intimate views and fragments provide guidance for the everyday experience of being in a landscape. French philosopher Michel de Certeau likens walking to enunciation, assigning it the triple function of appropriating topography, occupying space, and moving between relational, differentiated positions.3 Walking is improvisational, guided by information, but enacted through choice. It is perhaps a linear act but rarely manifests as a straight or singular line on a plan or map. The experience of walking draws from multiple layers on the map. For example, the line of the route and the lines of the topography together demonstrate steepness and exertion. The route and the built features together describe the orientation and character of the trajectory. The route and the vegetal cover point to the sensorial experiences associated with the climatic and the atmospheric. A successful guide does not isolate elements of the experience—for example, landmarks and commerce—but instead presents fragments of the landscape where these elements interact on a tangible scale. Time, an hour or a day, is correlated with varied human activity. Through the conflation of line itineraries and pictorial representations, the line is modulated by experience, punctuated to describe the qualitative visual character with the necessary guidance metrics. The line, in these fragments, is no longer a singular entity—with one-dimensional descriptors like railroad or path or highway—but is loaded with information about adjacent monuments, social opportunities, or hydrological features. The fragment, as line and image, accommodates walking, driving, and riding as an informed cultural practice. The road map or atlas, by contrast, is more pragmatic, showing a network of interconnected transit options and guiding users to and from destination points. Road lines, best exemplified by the oil company– sponsored maps published from the late 1930s through the 1950s, the so-called golden age of roads, take on numerous colors, widths, and line types that distinguish them within the drawing. These maps began as monochromatic line drawings, to which further information, color, and services were gradually added. The line manifests at multiple scales and configurations: from the length of a mountain range to that of transnational highway, from a web of
LINE SYMBOL 199 urban streets to the clarity of a singular approach. The approach to the Parthenon, redesigned by architect Demetris Pikionis, is an example of how the line can exert a distinct grounded and physical presence. [FIG. 9.16] The thinness and variation of this cartographic symbol is merely a code designed to represent actual variation. The line is as old as the map, and this chapter explores its extended and diverse use as a signifier of physical infrastructure. Mobility and temporality are implied, but lines without spatial meaning and dimension—those that point to direction, flow, movement, and data visualization—are intentionally ignored. 1Jacques Bertin, Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 312. 2 Ibid. 3Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 97–98. 9.1 Jill Desimini, Line Typologies, 2014.
200 CARTOGRAPHIC GROUNDS