Transformative mappings: the cartographers house in the ecologists garden Reporting on a work-in-progress

Abstract

My thesis, entitled 'Transformative Mappings: the cartographer's house in the ecologist's garden', part design and part text, is concerned with contemporary design theory. However, its main ambition is to manifest theory in the action of designing and building a house for a cartographer within one of the world's most biodiverse landscapes. The principal aim of the research is to investigate possibilities for making highly site-specific architecture within biologically significant sites, linking mapping techniques to computer-aided design and manufacture processes. Contrary to local and global trends in architecture I am not seeking a romanticised vernacular nor trying to emulate the hyper-sensual form-making of practitioners such as Greg Lynn and Frank Gehry. Rather, I am interested in a complex ecology of architecture; an architecture generated through the agency of mapping, design, construction and landscape itself. Part one of this report explains the context of this project and is divided into three sub-themes: Ecologist's Garden, Mapping Techniques and Computer-aided Design and Manufacture. In part two, the writings of James Corner, the main theme for this issue of Landscape Review, form a critical framework for discussing the principal philosophical themes of the thesis. The sections, New Ecology of Seeing and Enacted Cartography describe creative projects developed specifically for the thesis.