Roger Paez, Manuela Valtchanova (elisava, barcelona)
with the collaboration of Michelle Bezik, Caterina Paez i Bunning, and anonymous life forms
As both researchers and practitioners, we explore the fertile crossovers between art, design, architecture and the city through maps and mapping. More than mere systems of representation, maps are powerful tools to construe new understandings of the world and inform decisions to transform it. This is what we call operative mapping. There is a quite literal resonance between mapping and mycelia: both are blind systems that let us see. Both mapping operations and fungal hyphae grow based on simple, iterative logics that result in complex meshworks. These meshworks reveal existing characteristics, potentials and opportunities, while simultaneously generating a consistent environment that becomes the foundation for manifold transformative operations. In a nutshell, both maps and mycelia are digestive systems that transform the world, and in transforming it open new paths for further transformations.
Civic Placemaking (CP, 2018-2022) is an applied research project that explored the relation between design, public space and social cohesion. For this project we developed a series of novel maps and explored their potential as design tools. The different mapping iterations developed for the CP project allowed us to address three distinct approaches to operative mapping in design: spatial mapping to reveal site opportunities based on graphic operations; temporal mapping to understand dynamic behaviour based on data gathering during events; and experiential mapping to expand urban visions based on subjective/collective citizen desires from crowdsourced data and citizen science experiments.
For our contribution to Melbourne Design Week’s MYCOCOSM exhibition, we took a series of maps generated for the CP project and laid them out sequentially as a single large sheet. We posited the maps as a rational form of mycelia since the process of mapping revealed hidden aspects of reality. We then curated a ‘mapping the maps’ series to explore how three different agents (computer algorithm, unbiased human, OTH life forms) would react to the same base maps, connecting them graphically through an automated, reactive mycelial meshwork. By exploring the growth of three distinct meshworks based on the unbiased reactions to the graphic components of the initial maps on the part of three very different agents (script, hand, mould), the aim is to expand mapping practices through a mycelial approach, enacting mechanisms of accidentality, plurality and visual (dis)order. We are interested in studying how multiagent interactions can be detected in the unintentional connections between ideas and mapped phenomena by harnessing randomness and immediacy. The resulting ‘mycelial mapping’ explores accidents as opportunities, in which iterative (computer, human, and fungal growth) protocols and chance-based graphic relationships potentially open new avenues for critical design action. What type of actions will these new maps allow us to conceive?
SCRIPT [computer algorithm]
Using a grasshopper script, three modes of analysis are performed from the pre-existing maps—trajectory, continuity, and value. The first is a measure of trajectory, where the script finds moments of directionality within the maps and creates a starting point. From these points, arcs are created following their vectors. These arcs are proportionally sized to the distances of the paths that extend from these points. The second is a search for continuities within and between the maps, connecting two points of interest at a time. Finally, the Galapagos genetic solver iterates traces of particles as it searches for the maximum change in numeric values from one map to the next.
HAND [unbiased human]
When I first saw the base I had to work on, composed of 8 seemingly unrelated maps, I tried to find something that connected them, a shared characteristic. I landed on numbers, the many digits that appeared on every map. I decided to create a set of rules: I had 3 differently sized pens, and using these I designed a shape for every number, from 1 to 9. I used the thinnest pen for numbers 1 to 3, drawing a square with one, two or three horizontal lines, respectively. For numbers 4 to 6, I followed the same process, only using the thicker pen. Finally, for numbers 7 to 9 I used the thickest marker, making a stroke followed by one, two or three lines as the number increased. Once this was done for every map, I connected the numbers throughout the piece with a thin line (1 with 1, 2 with 2, 3 with 3, etc.), tying all the maps together.
MOULD [OTH life forms]
As an invitation for OTH life to map the original maps, we applied yoghurt and cheese culture to Kozo-fibre paper by the Japanese paper master Hasegawa. The specific areas where the culture was applied, identified as dashed fillet polygons in the final map, resulted from b/w contrasting the original maps, pixelating them to identify the darkest areas, and finally connecting the resulting pixels in closed polygons. We protected the cultured paper with plastic and cardboard and sprayed a little water over the entire surface once a week for three weeks. After that time, we took high-resolution pictures of the growth of various moulds (and the traces of other species, including a brown rat). Finally, we post-processed the pictures in Ps and Ai. The arrows in the final document are the result of automatically vectorialising the photographic images, so they precisely map the various moulds’ growth trajectories and intensities.
Roger Paez
PhD architect, professor and researcher. Professional experience in the studios of Alison+Peter Smithson and Enric Miralles. Founder of AiB architects. Design for City Making Research Lab leader and MEATS director at ELISAVA (UVic-UCC), architectural design professor at ETSALS (URL), guest professor at universities worldwide. Author of Operative Mapping: Maps as Design Tools (Actar 2019), and Plug-ins: Design for City Making in Barcelona (Actar 2022). Works at the intersection of design, architecture and the city, focusing on temporality, experimentation and social impact. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9038-552X
Manuela Valtchanova
Architect (TUM, Munich/UACEG, Sofia, 2015), PhD (University of Barcelona, Department of History and Theory of Art), researcher at ELISAVA Research (Design for City Making) and associated professor for the Undergraduate Degree in Design and Innovation and the Master of Ephemeral Architecture and Temporary Spaces (MEATS), ELISAVA. In her professional career, she has collaborated in several architectural offices with a specific focus on heterogeneous architecture formats, ranging from stage and exhibition spaces to interventions in public space. Her work focuses on the critical transaction between politics, space and intersubjectivity with a main research interest in the architecture of action. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7168-7645
Contributors:
Michelle Bezik [SCRIPT]
Michelle Bezik is an interdisciplinary and research-driven architect from the US based in Barcelona, where she received her Masters in Advanced Architecture from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. With specializations ranging from passive house design to 3D printing in architecture, she has worked with architecture studios and participated in exhibitions across the United States and Europe. In conjunction, she has assisted workshops and academic studios with the Architectural Association Visiting School and IAAC.
Caterina Paez i Bunning [HAND]
16-year-old student born in Barcelona. She is currently studying Humanities in her junior year of high school (Súnion). She has been dancing ballet for nine years and has a keen interest in art and literature.
OTH life [MOULD]
Several other-than-human (OTH) life forms responded to the call to react to our base maps, including but not limited to the following: [FUNGI] Stachybotrys chartarum (black mould), Chrysosporium sulfureum (yellow mould); [BACTERIA] Serratia marcescens (pink mould); [ARTHROPODA] Armadillidium vulgare (pill bug); [MAMMALIA] Ratus norvegicus (brown rat). The authors wish to thank them for their collaboration.
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