Thinking about place / mapping gardens in Montreal

Place as assemblage: Montreal Garden Mapping

Abstract

This paper borrows Manual De Landa’s assemblage theory, an elastic schema of society, to consider places as dynamic and extroverted entities, made up of spatial, social and material component parts. The paper also discusses the potential of mapping as an operational practice championed in Landscape Urbanism to harness the dynamic qualities of place for making design. Then follows a description and discussion of Montreal Garden Mapping, a project for the 2010 Arts and Cartography Workshop: Mapping Environmental Issues in the City. In this project a landscape urbanist approach to mapping was engaged to map the municipal gardens of Montreal against De Landa’s assemblage schema, in order to unfold some of the spatial, social and material component parts and contingent relations of the Montreal place assemblage.

Kathy Waghorn, The University of Auckland

To be published in a forthcoming book (as me if you would like a draft copy).