Geography and Design

Eric Huntley and I co-organized an AAG panel discussion on April 22nd with a number of our friends and colleagues on the intersections between Geography and Design. The call for panelists and submitted responses from panelists follows.

[A]rchitects, unlike artists, evidently have designs on the world. (Carter 2009, p. 79)

What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward anexperimentation in contact with the real. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 12)

The design disciplines and geography have a long history of cross-disciplinary engagement. An illustrative (though by no means exhaustive) list of prior entanglements would include: Cesariano’s 16th-century cosmography that combined cartography and architectural perspective (Gissen 2008), the cartographic experiments of Buckminster Fuller (Life Magazine 1943), the architecturally-inspired functionalism of Arthur Robinson (Robinson 1952), the regionally-scaled ecological imaginaries of Ian McHarg (1995), and the critical geographical bent of studio research practices (Varnelis 2007). We appear to be in the midst of a new episode in this history characterized by reinvigorated interest in geographic methods and cartographic representation within the design disciplines. Whether operating under the auspices of ecological urbanism (Mostafavi 2010), landscape urbanism (Waldheim 2006), forensic architecture (Weizman 2010), or geo-architecture (Sarkis 2014), designers are increasingly deploying cartographic spatial strategies and practicing geographic research in the context of projects that assert new operative scales for intervention and seek to explode the traditional territories of design.

This panel of designers examined the practices, concepts, assumptions, and representations that characterize this most recent cross-disciplinary encounter. As designers increasingly draw on the theoretical, representational, and methodological corpus of geography, it is crucial that we ask: how might we begin to think about these current entanglements between Geography and Design? And how might that thought affect the practices of both designers and geographers?

Panelists:
Zulaikha Ayub, Mississippi State University
Robert Cabral, University of Michigan
Eric Huntley, University of Kentucky
Amy Motzny, University of Michigan
Brent Sturlaugson, Yale University
Andreas Viglakis, MapBox

Moderator:
Matthew W. Wilson, University of Kentucky


1. What is design?

Design is the construction and cultivation of systems.
Zulaikha Ayub

Design is the material exploration of possible worlds. Broadly, it is a practice directed at the process of transforming the world.
Robert Cabral

Design is the practice of exploring the potentialities of spaces through an experimental, positive form of critique.
Eric Huntley

Design is problem-solving. In landscape architecture, design is problem-solving that responds to context, where forms emerge and elements are arranged in response to a site's characteristics.
Amy Motzny

Design is the articulation of intent, either declared or undeclared, that is represented through visual and/or verbal media.
Brent Sturlaugson

A rational creative solution to a problem.
Andreas Viglakis


2. How do the design disciplines conceptualize space?

The discipline of Architecture conceptualizes space as the registration of latent cultural, cosmographic, and otherwise meaningful systems.
Zulaikha Ayub

Within design disciplines, our attention to the conceptualization of space historically oscillates between two poles: within one pole, there is a concern with phenomenological aspects of space, including affect and sensibility; the other is positivistic in nature and conceptualizes space as knowable streams of data.
Robert Cabral

The design disciplines conceive of space as an actually existing collection of site conditions that precede their representation but also as a malleable field that can be reassembled through intervention.
Eric Huntley

Landscape architects conceptualize space through an understanding of complex systems that exist within multiple scales. The designer makes decisions based on a combination of synthesis, selection, and designer intuition.
Amy Motzny

Space is a medium through which history might be read.
Brent Sturlaugson

A plastic territory upon which a designer's desires and ambitions are inscribed.
Andreas Viglakis


3. How do the design disciplines conceptualize the future?

The future is collapsed into the present when it is considered within a design formula, and is thus conceptualized through the desires and biases of the present moment.
Zulaikha Ayub

Design deals with potentialities, which is to say it critically engages, rather than forecasts the future.
Robert Cabral

The future might be seen as changeable in a knowable way (the design being the realization of a goal or plan) or as active and unknowable (the design only setting the initial conditions for a basically-unpredictable unfolding).
Eric Huntley

Future landscape designs are the embodiment of human decisions. Good designers anticipate unpredictability in human decision-making and design with enough flexibility to allow for change.
Amy Motzny

If space is a medium through which history might be read, then the future is written in space.
Brent Sturlaugson

A speculative condition that justifies present day action.
Andreas Viglakis


4. What is the role of representation in design?

Invoking Paul Virlio's statement that "there is no war then without representation", I would say there is no design without representation--and inversely, there is no representation without design.
Zulaikha Ayub

Representation is a statement of the designer’s intent that is inherently tied to claims about how we know and experience the world; it both influences and is influenced by the practice of design.
Robert Cabral

Representations, released into the wild, function as proselytizing moments of self-advocacy, while the work of representation acts on the design process and on the designer.
Eric Huntley

Representation is often misleading - communicating unrealistic ideas about the future, it is the responsibility of the designer to represent visions of the future with integrity.
Amy Motzny

Representation, as a process, is modified by representation, as an object, in a continual feedback loop.
Brent Sturlaugson

A tool of persuasion and argumentation.
Andreas Viglakis


5. How should we evaluate design research?

For its endgame, and the precision by which it seeks to achieve it.
Zulaikha Ayub

Design research adopts modes of thought and methodologies from many disciplines to inform its projections; it should be evaluated on its ability to organize itself within relevant analytical frames, and its ability to work within these operational paradigms.
Robert Cabral

Design research should be evaluated based on the degree to which it successfully bridges its intervention and the research practice from which it emerges; in this absence of this bridge, design research might be best left as one or the other: design or research.
Eric Huntley

As a student of landscape architecture in a program that is uniquely situated within the School of Natural Resources and Environment, my work is upheld to the highest standard of research in both the natural and social sciences, which often limits speculative design potential. The researcher is a specialist and the designer is a generalist. In order for interdisciplinary work to be successful, there needs to be compromises between both points of view.
Amy Motzny

Design research should be evaluated by the extent to which it examines the range of possibilities afforded by a design.
Brent Sturlaugson

The degree to which it pushes against a designer's first instincts.
Andreas Viglakis


References:
Carter, Paul. 2009. Dark Writing, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Gissen, David. 2008. “Architecture’s Geographic Turns.” Log 12: 59–67.
“Life Presents R. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion World.” Life Magazine, March 1943.
McHarg, Ian. 1995. Design With Nature. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Mostafavi, Mohsen, ed. with Gareth Doherty. Ecological Urbanism. Zurich, CH: Lars Müller Publishers.
Robinson, Arthur. 1952. The Look of Maps. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Sarkis, Hashim. 2014. “Geo-Architecture: A Prehistory for an Emerging Aesthetic.” Harvard Design Magazine 37 (Winter 2014): 124-151.
Varnelis, Kazys. 2007. “Is There Research in the Studio?” Journal of Architectural Education 61 (1): 11– 14.
Waldheim, Charles, ed. 2006. The Landscape Urbanism Reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press.
Weizman, Eyal. 2010. “Forensic Architecture: Only the Criminal Can Solve the Crime.” Radical Philosophy 164 (November/December): 9-24.