Reading week 2, 2011

Hello, here are the questions to guide your reading for this week. Remember you are reading all of the texts, but answering the questions or doing the further research for one of them. The text that you read in more depth is the text you will be prepared to discuss with the class next Wednesday.

Allen, S. (2000). Mapping the unmappable, on notation. From Practice, architecture, technique and representation. London and New York: Routledge. Pg 31- 45
1: What does Allen mean when he says that architectural drawing is instrumental?
2: What change in the literary descriptions of the city does Steven Marcus note, and why is this relevant to Allen's argument?
3: What is the main argument that Allen is making?
4: Suggest some areas, topics, or relations that could be mapped in relation to water in Auckland that would include aspects of anticipation, invisibility and time as discussed by Allen.


Cosgrove, D. (2006) Carto-city in Abrams, J. & Hall, P. (Eds.). Else/where: mapping new cartographies of networks and territories. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Design Institute. 148-157
1: Cosgrove says that urban maps, "continue to control the daily lives of citizens through zoning ordinances, zip codes, and the myriad territorial regulations that shape daily life". Locate, and bring to class, at least 5 maps of Auckland city that operate in this way and explain how they operate in Cosgrove's terms.
2: Radial axis and the grid. Cosgrove mentions Versaille, Rome and Paris as radial axis cities and Greek colonies of the Mediterranean, imperial Chinese cities and modern American cities as being based on the grid. Locate some historical maps of Auckland, and bring to class. Are they radial or grid? Find other examples of radial and grid cities.
3: Locate and bring a copy of Charles L'Enfant's map of Washington, DC. and describe it in Cosgrove's terms to the class and compare to the map of Auckland from number 2.
4: Take a look at Braun and Hegenberg's city maps from Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1570). (Click here for good res versions). Find a copy of Turgot's 1739 Plan de Paris. Using these describe the visual differences that Cosgrove identifies. Why are these differences important?

In relation to pg 1 See Wikipedia on redlining

Questions for Corbellini, G. (2006). Diagrams, instructions for use. Lotus International (127), 88-95.

1. What is the panopticon? (Locate an image)
2. Make a list of the functional attributes of the diagram as discussed by this author.
3. Is a map a diagram? Yes - why? No-why?
4. What are the differences that this author describes between a compositional approach and a diagrammatic approach to design?

NB* When copying images remember to reference the source.