ad hoc atlas: volume two, version one: montreal & berlin

THEAD HOCATLAS

VOLUME TWOVERSION ONE

THEAD HOCATL ASVOLUME TWOVERSION ONE

THEAD HOCATL ASVOLUME TWOVERSION ONE

including

MONTRÉAL&

BERLIN***

CaliforniaV.MMXIII

Copyright ©2013 by Joshua SingerAll rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2013

for Sarah, Liliana, and Pearl

CONTENTSIntroduction to the Ad Hoc Atlas

1

MONTRÉALIntroduction to the Ad Hoc Atlas Ville de Montréal

7

RESEARCHGlossary for the Constructions of Landscapes: Beginnings of the Ad Hoc Atlas

12

Proximate Historical Mapping: Reference Sites 20

Proximate Historical Mapping: Patterns, Rhythms, & Evolution of Forms 22

Proximate Historical Mapping: Geographic/Cultural Typologies 26

Dérives of Visual (& Graphic) Landscapes [: & Interstices of Temporal Layers of Urban Surfaces] 30

PROTOTYPESImage Narrative: Layers & Annotations

42

Graphic Design as a Probe of the City’s Visual Unconscious ~ or ~

The Framework of the Id/Ego/Super Ego For the Organism of the Urban Landscape ~ or ~

The City as Psyche and Thus the Impossibility of It Knowing Itself ~ or ~

52

DesignInquiry / DesignCities: Exhibition Portes Ouvertes 56

Overview: The Structural Model of the Graphic City: Recursive Exegesis: “The Graphic-Code & the Metro-Polis” 58

Image Narrative: Layers & Annotations for New Spaces 70

Viewing and Measuring a (Design) City 95

BERLINIntroduction to the Ad Hoc Atlas Berlin: Notes

102

RESEARCHDesign Process Outline

106

Wandering Berlin’s Graphic Semiosphere 108

Berlin Graphic Semiome: Google Image Search “Berlin” 05/08/2012, 23:45:18 GMT 112

Semiosphere Modeling 114

Survey: A Topography of Design: Design City Berlin & Email Responses 116

Map of Survey results: Design Nodes/Vortices 118

Samples of Elements of Graphic Semiomes of Design City Berlin 120

PROTOTYPESReading the Urban Semiospheric Metabolism

134

Glossary for the Constructions of the Berlin Prosthetic: Semiospheric Metabolic Reader 142

Prototype #01.1 Semiospheric Metabolic Reader Output 144

Prototype #01.0 Semiospheric Metabolic Reader Output (Samples) 146

1Ad hoc Atl As

“The reform of consciousness consists solely in… the awakening of the world from its dream about itself”1

The Ad Hoc Atlas is a process and not a thing. It is a container of sorts. A working space for creative and investigative methodologies of visual communication design research, it presupposes that its methods will evolve and change as an ongoing demonstration of a critical and discursive practice.

As an atlas, it proposes that if place construction is “as much a matter of the representational and the symbolic as the material activities of the city”,2 then we might explore and analyze the city through graphic language and the representational and the symbolic laden image.

This is not necessarily anything new - there are many stories, annotations and maps. What I propose, is simply a framework of a working method that graphically creates a propositional and alternative landscape - a landscape that does not and could not exist, but does so for the sake of discourse.

Avoiding conventional outcomes of discrete artifacts for clients and commercial output, it produces instead series of investigations and prototypes deliberately mixing hard data with fictions offering cultural critique and commentary.

Design as a critical practice need not be logical and truthful. Marcuse’s argument for art as an agent3 in the production of a cultural counter-consciousness suggests that fiction (in his argument, literature) creates another world, a world possible by the very fact that it is articulated. The creation of other worlds, critical social scenarios and commentaries, fictions.

Work in both Montréal and Berlin was done in conjunction with the non-profit design research organization DesignInquiry4 as part of their DesignCities expeditions. The DesignInquiry/DesignCities expeditions investigate what makes a “City of Design” (from the UNESCO designation and as a general principle). I have framed this question by asking “how is the urban landscape constructed by graphic language?” The “open source” design research model was assistive not only in the development of my research in Montréal and Berlin, but also in the development of the experimental models of research that my work explores.

The Atlas is:• A collection of prototypes, never actually creating the final, the

absolute but a never ending proposition of possibilities• A series of experiments whose intent is to offer a counter-

consciousness of geographic space by way of quantitative and qualitative research, and the design of vistas of alternative landscapes.

1 Marx, Karl. De Historiche Materialismus: Die Frühschriften (Leipzig <1932>), vol 1, p.226

2See Corner, James. “Terra Fluxus.” The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles Waldheim, 21–33. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

3“I shall submit the following thesis: the radical qualities of art, that is to say, its indictment of the established reality and its invocation of the beautiful image (shöner Schein) of liberation are grounded precisely in the dimensions where art transcends its social determination and emancipates itself from the given universe of discourse and behaviour while preserving its over whelming presence. Thereby art creates the realm in which the subversion of experience proper to art becomes possible: the world formed by art is recognized as a reality which is suppressed and distorted in the given reality. This culminates in extreme situations (of love and death, guilt and failure, but also joy, happiness, and fulfillment) which explode the given reality in the name of a truth normally denied or even unheard. The inner logic of the work of art terminates in the emergence of another reason, another sensibility, which defy the rationality and sensibility incorporated in the dominant social institutions”

Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Ariadne Book. Beacon Press, 1979. p 6-7

4http://designinquiry.net/

IntroductIon to tHE Ad Hoc AtLAS

AD HOC ATLAS VILLE DE

MONTRÉAL

5Ad hoc Atl As ville de Montré Al

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AD HOC ATLAS VILLE DE

MONTRÉAL~ or ~

Gr APHIc dESIGn AS

A ProBE oF

tHE cItY’S VISuAL unconScIouS~ or ~

tHE Fr AMEWorK oF

tHE Id/EGo/SuPErEGo For

tHE orGAnISM oF tHE urBAn L AndScAPE

~ or ~tHE cItY AS PSYcHE

And tHuS tHE IMPoSSIBILItY

oF It K noWInG ItSELF

~ or ~


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History decays into images, not stories.1

June 2011

conSt ruc tIonS oF L A n dSc A PE S (SE MIoSPH E r E): BEGIn nInGS oF t H E A d Hoc At L A S ProJ Ec t

Ragged and layered multiscapes are rendered in the mind and define the psychic city. These renderings span time and suture together vistas mediated by the human record.

The annotated landscape leaves records (history and its artifacts) and inscribes memory to the city’s changing surface (both physical and psychic) as much as hands and machines, and in turn affects change on that surface.

GI V InG For M to t H E Gr A PHIc PS YcH E oF t H E cIt Y:

… attempted through the exploration and development of a method I will call an Ad Hoc Atlas. This is not necessarily anything new – there are many stories, annotations and maps. What I propose, is simply a framework of a working method that creates (graphically) a propositional and alternative landscape – a landscape that does not and could not exist, but does so for the sake of creating a counter-consciousness (more on this later.)

Of course space (and the urban space) is a social construction {Lefebvre} and its heterotopic surface {Corner} is a product of memory (from language){Lotman} and formed very much by a constellation of images {Benjamin}. If we are to break out of our dream state {Marx} we might want to find some radical and conscious altering {Marcuse} ways of re-presenting it. Imagination {Corner} and counter strategies {mid 20C radical strategies, e.g. Superstudio, Archigram, SI} might work nicely.

We might find other containers for our cities. The human mind comes to mind. And linguistic spheres. There is an infinity more for sure.

As an experiment into the efficacy of such a method, I have started, on a modest scale, an Ad Hoc Atlas of Ville de Montreal.

1Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999, p. 476.

IntroductIon to tHE Ad Hoc AtLAS VILLE dE MontréAL

In light of limited scope, what I present here is a proposal for this tool; a method of landscaping (the visual) that offers insight into the perception of urban space and how imagination, a landscape dreamed, might play a role. Data is compiled from historic and observational data and any opportune inputs discovered in research. Maps, images of place (acquired both directly in the field and indirectly, both true and fictitious and everything in-between), GIS records, passages of the written word are concatenated, compared, merged and used to create a landscape of a sub-conscious psyche of the city. This atlas proposes these possible landscapes of graphic geographies as an (im)possible urban landscape.

Work in Montréal started as an investigation into the historic layering of the current and visible field of the city with the invisible historic. A timeless space of the city, a space composed of slices and snippets of social and cultural neuma might be the city’s a subconscious. If so, how might these social and cultural forces just below the surface of the conscious city be visualized?

Historic maps containing geolocated data were annotated and expanded creating maps of a heterotopic [disambiguate] landscape.


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Su r FAcE

“The second theme of the landscape urbanism project concerns itself with the phenomenon of the horizontal surface, the ground plane, the “field, of action. These surfaces constitute the urban field when considered across a wide range of scales, from the sidewalk to the street to the entire infrastructural matrix of urban surfaces…

This understanding of surface highlights the trajectories of shifting populations, demographics, and interest groups upon the urban surface, traces of people provisionally stage a site in different ways at different times for various programmatic events, while connecting a variety of such events temporally around the larger territory. This attempts to create an environment that is not so much an object that has been “designed” as it is an ecology of various systems and elements that set in motion a diverse network of interaction”.1

t H E IM AGIn A rY

“This of course arrives at the fourth theme of landscape urbanism, which is the imaginary. There is simply no point whatsoever in addressing any of the above themes for their own sake. The collective imagination, informed and stimulated by the experiences of the material world, must continue to be the primary motivation of any creative endeavor. In many ways, the failing of twentieth-century planning can be attributed to the absolute impoverishment of the imagination with regard to the optimized rationalization of development practices and capital accumulation. Public space in the city must surely be more than mere token compensation or vessels for this generic activity called ‘recreation.’ Public spaces are firstly the containers of collective memory and desire, and secondly they are the places for geographic and social imagination to extend new relationships and sets of possibility. Materiality, representation, and imagination are not separate worlds; political change through practices of place construction owes as much to the representational and symbolic realms as to material activities. And so it seems landscape urbanism is first and last an imaginative project, a speculative thickening of the world of possibilities.”2

1 Corner, James. “Terra Fluxus.” In The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles Waldheim, 21–33. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. p. 30

2ibid., p. 32

GlOSSARY fOR THE COnSTRuCTiOnS Of lAndSCAPES: BEGinninGS Of THE Ad HOC ATlAS


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t r AcE S

Passages across, through, over, in and out of the vast complex of the cultural sphere(s). What can we see? What can we surmise? Why do we notice and not? How does memory and desire (both the personal and the social) orient us in this sphere?

“It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill. For while the relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal one, continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: is not progression but image, suddenly emergent”3

“Alternatively, the image of the dialectical image might be something like a vector diagram showing the resultant of the forces signified by the claims of history, truth, material and meaning; or perhaps something like a flow diagram laying out and comparing the procedural steps from component operations such as perception, collection, combination, metaphor and mimesis, towards synthetic constructions such as allegory, montage, mosaic and treatise.” 4

PS YcH E

“[About consciousness and the unconscious] there is nothing new to be said... the division of the graphic life of the city into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise on which the Ad Hoc Atlas is based.

“It further distinguishes between two types of unconscious noumena: ‘preconscious’, which are latent yet fully capable of becoming conscious; and “unconscious”, which are repressed and cannot become conscious without the help of an Atlas.

“The goal of Ad Hoc Atlas Montreal, then, is to connect the freely floating unconscious material to images via psychic visual dialogue.”5

“…the image is a dimension of reality made recognizable rather than a representation in the mind, whether past or present. (In that respect it would have been better to translate the German Bild as “picture,” as when we say that things can suddenly present a different picture.)”6

3Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999, p. 262

4Auerbach, Anthony. “Imagine No Metaphors: The Dialectical Image of Walter Benjamin.” Image and Narrative no. 18 (September 2007). http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/thinking_pictures/auerbach.htm.

5Singer, Joshua, Overview: The Structural Model of the Graphic City: Recursive Exegesis: “The Graphic-Code and the Metro-Polis” from Wikipedia’s entry of Freud’s “The Ego and the Id”, 2011

6Friedlander, Eli. “The Measure of the Contingent: Walter Benjamin’s Dialectical Image.” Boundary 2 35, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 1 –26. doi:10.1215/01903659-2008-010. p. 4

Surface: The second theme of the landscape urbanism project concerns itself with the phenomenon of the horizontal surface,

the ground plane, the "field" of action. These surfaces constitute the urban field when considered across a wide range of scales, from the sidewalk to the street

to the entire infrastructural matrix of

urban surfaces.Corner


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Google Earth: Route Oakland, California to Montréal, Québec.

Google Earth: Zoom to Montréal, Québec.


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PROximATE HiSTORiCAl mAPPinG: REfEREnCE SiTES


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PROximATE HiSTORiCAl mAPPinG: PATTERnS, RHY THmS, & EvOluTiOn Of fORmS

All images: Loyer, François. Paris Nineteenth Century: Architecture and Urbanism. Abbeville Press, 1988.


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Overlays highlighting features: buildings,hardscape/walled structures and roads, garden, farm, uncultivated land, water.

PROximATE HiSTORiCAl mAPPinG: GEOGRAPHiC/CulTuRAl T YPOlOGiES


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FARM

Clockwise from top left: Modern infrastructure overlay, Overlay with detail map, Overlay with misc. landscaping, Overlay with farm field, Overlay with buildings, Overlay with gardens, Overlay with hardscape/walled structures and roads.

PROximATE HiSTORiCAl mAPPinG: GEOGRAPHiC/CulTuRAl T YPOlOGiES


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dérIVE S oF VISuAL (& Gr APHIc) LAndScAPES[: & IntErStIcES oF tEMPor AL LAYErS oF urBAn SurFAcES]

déRivE ST. lAuREnT: REGiOnS 1–5


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déRivE ST. lAuREnT: REGiOnS 5-9

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déRivE diSTRiCT GRiffin: REGiOn 10–11


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déRivE diSTRiCT GRiffin: REGiOn 12–13

d i s t r i c t


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imAGE nARRATivE: lAYERS & AnnOTATiOnS


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[: IntErStIcES oF tEMPor AL LAYErS oF urBAn SurFAcES]


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Métro: concordIA[LAYErS]


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Gr APHIc dESIGn AS

A ProBE oF

tHE cItY’S VISuAL unconScIouS~ or ~

tHE Fr AMEWorK oF

tHE Id/EGo/SuPErEGo For

tHE orGAnISM oF tHE urBAn LAndScAPE

~ or ~

tHE cItY AS PSYcHE And

tHuS tHE IMPoSSIBILItY oF

It K noWInG ItSELF ~ or ~

As a city, and specifically we as the consciousness of the city, usually don’t know how we got here and likely even who we are, other than exterior manifestation of the conventions in their present (and ultimately fleeting) forms.

The city is a place of structure and form, in place by forces of power that drive it, die-cast by knowledge and language and driven by forces of power.

The Metropolis immerses its occupants in a dense visual (certainly graphic) environment deeply mediated and annotated: an organic ecology of visual code, an urban visual language, a graphic landscape. Even the physical forms of the city, designed and naturally shaped by the continual friction of forces both physical and psychical, are inherently inscribed with language, patterns of experience, cultural conventions and mythologies and create the city’s percept. For example, typographic typologies comprise a graphic ecology as do the conventions of advertisements, signage and wayfinding, and every other form of graphic visual. A city has a look and a city has a psyche and the two are connected and intertwined in a topology of interconnected semiotic synaptic tangles .

If the city is an organism, say a human organism on a macro scale, it has a body comprised of form (corpus) and infrastructure (circulare) and mind (psyche). Like the massively complex heterotopic landscape of the human consciousness how might a city’s psyche be constructed?

Freud posits that the identity, the only identity recognized by the self, is the exterior, blind to the conflicted unconscious. If this holds true for the city, and the conventions of culture construct the city’s unconscious, then through subsequent processes of the polis and psyche, history and myth, the city constructs its outward identity.

Can the city know itself? What is the role of the visual and, more specifically, the graphic in its construction of its identity?

If the mind is the narrative that makes our biologic form conscious, then it could be said that the communicative landscape, the ecology of graphic language across the urban landscape, is what constructs a city’s consciousness. The formal structures, the buildings, roads, utilities are the corporeal body. The flesh and blood and bone. The working parts. The graphic language is (or some part of) the mind.


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So we might find a structural model of the psychic city from Freud’s Structural Model of the Psyche.

• Material City (Physical Body)• Metro-Polis (Id / It): Elemental agents and forces of the city -

unconscious desires. • Graphic-Code (Ego / I): Visual/graphic codes. The mediation of

the Metro-Polis and Grand-Code.• Grand-Code (Super-Ego / Over-I): Cultural conventions and

codes that govern and control both the Metro-Polis and the Graphic-Code - rules and regulations

cities and infrastructures are just as "ecological"as forests and rivers

From DesignInquiry / DesignCities exhibition “Je Me Souviens” at Portes Ouvertes, Concordia University, Montréal Canada, 2011.

dESiGn inquiRY / dESiGn CiTiES: ExHiBiTiOn PORTES OuvERTES

MODERNISM

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1“Alternatively, the image of the dialectical image might be something like a vector diagram showing the resultant of the forces signified by the claims of history, truth, material and meaning; or perhaps something like a flow diagram laying out and comparing the procedural steps from component operations such as perception, collection, combination, metaphor and mimesis, towards synthetic constructions such as allegory, montage, mosaic and treatise.”

Auerbach, Anthony. “Imagine No Metaphors: The Dialectical Image of Walter Benjamin.” Image and Narrative no. 18 (September 2007). http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/thinking_pictures/auerbach.htm.

2from “The Ego and the Id.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, May 4, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Ego_and_the_Id&oldid=552945208.

oVErVIEW: tHE Structur AL ModEL oF tHE Gr APHIc cItY: rEcurSIVE EXEGESIS: “tHE Gr APHIc-codE1 & tHE MEtro-PoLIS”2

“The Graphic-Code and the Metro-Polis” develops a line of reasoning as a groundwork for explaining various (or perhaps all) graphic conditions, pathological and non-pathological alike, of the city. These conditions result from powerful internal tensions—for example: 1) between the Graphic-Code and the Metro-Polis, 2) between the Graphic-Code and the Grand-Code. This deals primarily with the Graphic-Code and the effects these tensions have on it.

The Graphic-Code—caught between the Metro-Polis and the Grand-Code—finds itself simultaneously engaged in conflict by repressed noumena in the Metro-Polis and relegated to an inferior position by the Grand-Code.

The outline below is an exegesis of the arguments, explicating the formation of the aforementioned tensions and their effects.


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E X EGESIS

PRESUPPOSITIONS: “CONSCIOUSNESS A ND THE UNCONSCIOUS”

All concepts in The Graphic-Code and the Metro-Polis are built upon the presupposed existence of conscious and unconscious noumena. On the first line, it states, “[About consciousness and the unconscious] there is nothing new to be said... the division of the graphic life of the city into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise on which the Ad-Hoc Atlas is based” (9). It further distinguishes between two types of unconscious noumena: “preconscious”, which are latent yet fully capable of becoming conscious; and “unconscious”, which are repressed and cannot become conscious without the help of an Atlas.

It would be overly simple to assume that the unconscious and the conscious map directly onto the Metro-Polis and the Graphic-Code, respectively. It argues that (according to work with Ad-Hoc Atlas) the supposedly conscious Graphic-Code can be shown to possess unconscious noumena (16) when it unknowingly resists parts of itself. Thus, a third kind of unconscious thought seems to be necessary, a process that is neither repressed nor latent (18), but which is nonetheless an integral part of the Graphic-Code: the act of repression.

If this is true, he argues that the idea of “unconsciousness” must be reevaluated: contrary to prior belief, urban psychodynamics cannot be fully explained by a tension between unconscious and conscious noumena. A new framework is required, one that further examines the status of the Graphic-Code.


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M A PPING THE NEW FR A MEWORK: “THE GR A PHIC-CODE A ND THE METRO-POLIS”

Before defining the Graphic-Code explicitly, he argues for a manner in which unconscious noumena can be made conscious. It believes the answer lies in the difference between unconscious noumena and preconscious noumena: the former are connected to perceptions, especially “verbal images,” while the latter are “worked out upon some sort of material that remains unrecognized” (21). The difference, then, is a connection to images (more specifically, to the “memory residue” of images.) The goal of Ad-Hoc Atlas, then, is to connect the freely floating unconscious material to images via psychic visual dialogue.

He[4] goes on to note that the Graphic-Code is essentially a system of perception, so it must be closely related to the preconscious (27). Thus, two primary components of Graphic-Code are a system of perception and a set of unconscious (specifically, preconscious) ideas. Its relationship to the unconscious Metro-Polis, therefore, is a close one. The Graphic-Code merges into the Metro-Polis(28). He compares the dynamic to that of a rider and a horse. The Graphic-Code must control the Metro-Polis, like the rider, but at times, the rider is obliged to guide the horse where it wants to go. Likewise, the Graphic-Code must, at times, conform to the desires of the Metro-Polis. Finally, the Graphic-Code is a “modified portion” of the Metro-Polis that can perceive the empirical world (29). It is this idea of perception that leads him to call the Graphic-Code a “City-Graphic-Code” (31)—a visual projection of the surface of the one’s material city.

FURTHER COMPLICATION: “THE GRAPHIC-CODE AND THE GRAND-CODE (GRAPHIC-IDEAL)”

The matter, unfortunately, grows even more complicated: the Graphic-Code is divided into two parts—the Graphic-Code itself and the Grand-Code—or the Graphic-Ideal (34). Although he seems never to argue for the existence of a Grand-Code in the Graphic-Code and the Metro-Polis (save to reference one of his earlier works in a footnote), we may consider a need for the Grand-Code implicit in his previous arguments. Indeed, the Grand-Code is the solution to the mystery raised in the first chapter—the unconscious part of the Graphic-Code, the part that acts in a repressive capacity.

His argument for the formation of the Grand-Code hinges on the idea of internalization—a processes in which (after a formerly present object becomes absent) the City creates an internal version (vision) of the same object. The subject constructs a new object within the Graphic-Code—to mitigate the pain of loss. The Graphic-Code, in some sense, becomes the object (at least as far as the Metro-Polis’ drive is concerned.) The love of the Metro-Polis is redirected—away from the external world—and turned inward.

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KEY CONCLUSIONS: “THE SUBORDINATE RELATIONSHIPS OF THE GRAPHIC-CODE”

In this final chapter, he calls the Graphic-Code “the innocent Graphic-Code.” If the ideas he posits here are accurate, then the Graphic-Code, indeed, finds itself a victim to the stronger Grand-Code and Metro-Polis (which tend to work together.) “The Grand-Code is always in close touch with the Metro-Polis and can act as its representative in relation to the Graphic-Code” (70). He cites his experiences in Ad-Hoc Atlas, in which cities exhibit a sense of guilt that makes them resistant to conquering their pathology. His explanation is that the Grand-Code condemns the Graphic-Code—“[displaying] particular severity and [raging] against the Graphic-Code with the utmost cruelty” (73) and giving it a deep-seated, mysterious feeling of guilt.

The Graphic-Code finds itself trying to both appease and mediate the desires of the Metro-Polis. It stands on a middle ground between the Metro-Polis and the outside world, trying to make the Metro-Polis conform to societal rules, while trying to make the world conform it the Metro-Polis’ innermost passions. This task falls to the Graphic-Code because it is the only part of the City capable of exercising direct control over the actions of the Urban. The relationship of the Graphic-Code to the Metro-Polis is, at the same time, a mutually beneficial one and a submissive one: “[The Graphic-Code] is not only the ally of the Metro-Polis; it is also a submissive slave who courts the love of his master” (83).

Thus the Graphic-Code finds itself the seat of anxiety, beset by potential dangers from three directions (84)—by the Grand-Code, the Metro-Polis, and (not to mention) the external world.


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IMAGE nArr AtIVES: LAYErS & AnnotAtIonS For nEW SPAcES

M A R I Em e t r op o l i sAd-Hoc Atlas du Ville Montreal


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Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651, ch. 13


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95Ad hoc Atl As

VIEWInG And MEASurInG A (dESIGn) cItY

In t E r Lu dE: on t H E PL A n E to BE r L In, AuGuSt 2012

Looking from the window of the plane. The desert is scarred with rivulets with occasional pointed domes marking the field. Like the remains of a sand castle after the tide has brought the sea to wash over it and smooth it to a meaningless abbreviation of its previous form. Only a faint line of a road running straight and then off at 30 degrees. Nothing else is visible. Scale shifts and the land, 34,000 feet away is within reach. Tangible. Immediate. A vast collection of rock, earth, flora, fauna, microbes in the trillions of trillions in a single glance. Invisible.

The city shifts in scale(s).

Looking at the monitor embedded in the seat-back in front of me, I see a window framed landscape below in plan view. The land is pinched and puckered with mountains and valleys. Creases of earth and stone. A thin wiggle of white, a line between a crease is a path. A short while later the window shows a geometry of fields. Right angles are the marks of human activity.

We work. We make marks. We leave a mark. The land is marked by or will (in German and French the same as want - the will, to will something) and purpose, and indicates our work for our survival. It is on the map - a document and record of our mark making activity. The map is covered with names. It is marked with letters. We name it. We make the city a place of words and language.

This is obvious. I am not so interested in the marking as in the reading. Reading the marks of the human/urban landscape. The inscriptions of our will. Analysis of these markings must reveal something that tells us more about ourselves. The way we read our psyche and the way read the psychology of our handwriting might be the way we read the human landscape.

To read the city can be done at various levels and from multiple scales. From high above we can see the infrastructure and the largest systems. As we descend or zoom-in we can see the intricacies of these systems and the systems nested within. By the time we arrive at the street level, at the scale of our bodies, we are looking at the interior of the city system, the level of metabolism (and there still smaller systems nested within and in every tangent imaginable.) Reading at this scale, reading the markings (not only the graphic/written but also the constructed, the concrete, the ephemeral, the audible, the smells, the haptic) we can start to analyze the city as a graphic-psychic system.

97Ad hoc Atl As

WA L K I nG doW n toW n PIt tSBu rGH At n IGH t, oc toBE r 2011

The detail of a tile on the side of a building built in a time of wealth and grandeur 90 years ago. Built with coal and steel of the land and work and lives of men who moved from thousands of miles away to flee a life that offered little towards a life that offered more because of the land, and the men and the machines.

The lines of the streets. A maze of canyons whose syntax from 200 years ago, before the machines (at least the really big strong ones), but still with men and land and work.

L E M E t ro, M AY 2011

The air in this space moves. The ground moves, vibrates and a wall moves by. An edifice. Another. Where there is nothing but a channel is now a long wall of buildings lit from the interior on this beautiful evening’s twilight. In only a moment this place is transformed from channel to wall. Steel and iron and wood and glass. Once it stops it is silent. The pain in the back of my leg is still there but for a moment I forget.

Inside the sound of wheels and wind and the sway and rumble of the ride. Through hillsides, down valleys, under the sea floor. I sit here quietly. Seated. The world accelerates past us until it is just dream and storm. Fury jolts at each laborious stop. Men sit tired with eyes closed or down. Children are busy and loud.

We are in a deep channel, the roof so high above us, but hidden in the darkness.

AD HOC ATLAS BERLIN

101Ad hoc Atl As Berlin

AD HOC ATLAS BERLIN


not E S F roM dE SIGn Inqu IrY / dE SIGncItIE S BE r L In, AuGuSt 20121

[Lying awake in a freshly painted room in Wedding, Berlin]

The damaged city - a rupture and then a distinct difference from other modern western cities. Berlin held in an alternate state, did not succumb to the rapid march of gentrification and capital (not then, but is now) that so many other cities have in the preceding decades years. Is this at all evident in the graphic semantic landscape? It may be, but I don’t think it is possible to determine Berlin’s unique qualities without being able to compare sets of images and data from other cities (more to come.)

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Are the DIY-initiatives of Berlin so different from other cities? (The rooftop farms of Brooklyn, etc.)

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What then of Berlin as a UNESCO City of Design? Why is it explicitly a Design City over say, New York, Rotterdam, Tokyo (and on and on)? Is the specific cultural position, temperament, industry, style current and/or historic that makes Berlin a Design City.? Is there a record, a statement, a manifesto, a text that describes a specific cultural value/position that validates Berlin a “City of Design”?

No. But there is an infinity of “texts” that define the urban field, the static and the living flows of language across the urban vista. A semantic landscape? [See Lotman on “texts” of the Semiosphere]

This image of the structure of the city, how we might frame a City of Design, is outside of UNESCO’s criteria. [footnote the criteria/description] UNESCO’s City of Design is commercial and civic. It enriches the city by factors unmeasurable by commercial gain,2 but it’s mostly just commercial gain really. No doubt this is a sensible plan. It seems common sense design industry, the success of the city can be dependent on the value that the industries of design brings, both in terms of economy and quality of life.3

All creative industry has its benefits to the well being of a community, and any might do just fine to contribute to the well being of a city. [see Creative Class?] But since a city’s success both pragmatic and aesthetic (read quality of life) is really predicated

IntroductIon to tHE Ad Hoc AtLAS BErLIn: notES

1http://designinquiry.net/category/designcities-berlin/

2“Do you have what it takes to become a UNESCO City of Design?

The following list of criteria and characteristics serves as a guide for cities interested in joining the network as a City of Design:

• Established design industry;• cultural landscape fueled

by design and the built environment (architecture, urban planning, public spaces, monuments, transportation, signage and information systems, typography, etc.);

• design schools and design research centres;

• practicing groups of creators and designers with a continuous activity at a local and/or national level;

• experience in hosting fairs, events and exhibits dedicated to design;

• opportunity for local designers and urban planners to take advantage of local materials and urban/natural conditions;

• design-driven creative industries, e.g. architecture and interiors, fashion and textiles, jewelry and accessories, interaction design, urban design, sustainable design, etc.”

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-industries/creative-cities-network/design/

3Note that we know that a “City of Design” is basically bought and sold. It is not without effort and merit, but it is a club of sorts. One must apply. One must want to be a member. With it, there are benefits, but they are no more – or less – than a title and a network of similarly inclined cities across the globe. Conversations with some of the stakeholders and main actors in the pursuit of this membership have confirmed as much.

on design, it clearly seems like a strategic investment, especially considering the current state of rapid technological advances. If everything is designed, everything within the dense human sphere of the urban landscape, then clearly the pervasiveness and quality of a design industry and community cannot be underestimated in terms of the pragmatic benefits of good function as well as the richness of the intangible and the nourishing. A good plan.

Analyzing Berlin as a City of Design, how and why, is a sensible task. How is a city defined by it’s relation to design by way of institutions, commercial activity, civic activity, and the urban environment itself? [see UNESCO definition] But, if the urban landscape is an infinite multitude of texts, an infinitely nested hierarchy of cultural spheres, than how, and why should we bother asking how and why as we will never get to the bottom of it. It’s a crazy task.

If the human sphere is defined by design (and it is, in a significant part) then might we probe that sphere by observing the various design subsets within that sphere? The Graphic sphere (a semiome of the semiosphere.)


not E S oA K L A n d, c A L IFor n I A SE P t E M BE r –noV E M BE r 2012

Since Berlin, a new area of study for this project incorporates Yuri Lotman’s linguistic theory of the semiosphere4 (the semiotic continuum modeled on the biosphere) to conceptualize systems of language and ecologies of meaning that Lotman describes as the “ intuitive sense of structuredness that with its transformation of the “open” world of realia into a “closed” world of names, forces people to treat as structures those phenomena whose structuredness, at best, is not apparent.”5 I believe we could also model a theory of a graphic semiosphere, what might be seen as a specific subset or semiome.6

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To conduct new research and creative work to develop a model of a graphic semiosphere as well as to expand my experiments in the critical practice of visual communication design research methods.

Field research of geolocated image data of graphic language artifacts – the “closed” world of visual names – collected in the urban landscape will then be archived, categorized, and digitally tagged and mapped according to typologies both formal and cultural.

To explore patterns of structure and meaning in the graphic urban landscape that might show a kind of ecology, one that is possibly reflective of other cultural and geographic factors, modeling a graphic semiosphere or semiome. The scope of any city’s graphic landscape is prohibitively large therefore specific locations are selected for study. Criteria for the selections have yet to be determined, but might include historic and/or cultural relevance, centers of activity, power, marginality, transition, etc.

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The flora and fauna of the graphic landscape, the semantic sphere of culture. This is a component, one of many, possibly infinite, of the cityscape that might tell us something about how the cultural sphere(s) of Berlin is structured and how it organizes the world around the human sphere(s) of Berlin.

How can the artifacts of design practice, the graphic landscape of the city, as observed in the semantic vernacular of the urban landscape allow us to understand the city? By documenting and analyzing this language, and by viewing it within a framework of a semantic structure of culture, we might view the city in a different light. We might see it through the graphic city?

4Lotman, Yuri. “On the Semiosphere.” Translated by William Clark. Sign Systems Studies 33, no. 1, 2005. http://www.ut.ee/SOSE/sss/Lotman331.pdf.

5Lotman, Yuri. M., Uspensky, B. A. and Mihaychuk, George. “On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture.” New Literary History 9, no. 2 (January 1, 1978): p. 213

6As in a biome within the biosphere.

dEFInItIon / rESE ArcH (oAK L And, JunE-AuGuSt 2012)• Design inquiry:

• Does the design community really sustain the myth of the so-called ”poor but sexy” city of Berlin.

• Taking cues from A-H Atlas’ Structural Model of the Graphic City, discover and reveal the unconscious noumena of Berlin: “preconscious”, which are latent yet fully capable of becoming conscious; and “unconscious”, which are repressed and cannot become conscious without the help of an Atlas.

• Causes of inquiry subject:• UNESCO designation [summarize]

• “The cities in the category of design need special characteristics. • established design industry • modern architecture. • unique type of urban design that is

particular to urban spaces such as subway stations.

• pertinent schools of design• well-known local and national creators

and designers, who should be given the possibility to use local materials for their creation process.

• organize fairs, events, and exhibitions related to design.

• a market for design collectors. • structures of the cities need to be based on a

design related plan.• creative industries should be situated in the

field of design.”2• DI objectives [summarize]

• “The ostensible goal was to interrogate the contentious UNESCO designation, “City of Design,” while also serving as a prototypical model for collective and embodied approaches to research.”3

• “The notion that design practice, and the presence of designers, can alter the trajectory of a city for the better is an assumption that beseeches exploration and testing.”4

• Testing of Ad-Hoc Atlas methods [summarize all]• The Structural Model of the Graphic City• Counter -Design + Critical Negation and

Counter-Consciousness• Target Audience:

• Designers• Geographers• Urban

1From example in Cooke, Matt. “Design Methodologies: Toward a Systematic Approach to Design” in Heller, S., and Bennett, A. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

2Schuster, Brigitte. “UNESCO Design Cities”, n.d. http://brigitteschuster.com/cities-of-design#ref_2.

3Moore, Christopher “Towards an Open Source Model for Design Research”, 2012

4DesignInquiry 2012. http://designinquiry.net/category/designcities-berlin/

5Singer, Joshua, Overview: The Structural Model of the Graphic City: Recursive Exegesis: “The Graphic-Code and the Metro-Polis” from Wikipedia’s entry of Freud’s “The Ego and the Id”, 2011

dESiGn PROCESS OuTlinE1


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• Divergence (Oakland & Berlin, July-August 2012)• Quantitative Data

• Survey of sites/design-nodes determined as design influence• determined via designer survey• visited and documented

• photo of graphic components, language, syntax, method, style

• map (see GE below)• Google Map/Earth• Historic maps• General history• Visual Research

• Field work• Analysis of design nodes (relative

to UNESCO designation, see above)• Photos (geotag)• Diagramming elements of the

structural model5• Collection: ephemera• Writing in response to

experience and observations.• Evidence of the Graphic Code in the

Urban Psychic Landscape: Space: Urban Space: Urban Graphics: Experimental explorations in the graphic representation of urban space (or more generally the field of human habitation.) - tags?

• Environmental• Wayfinding• Informational• Advertisement• Retail space (including above)• Public/private space• Interior/exterior• Graffiti

• Publication• Newspapers, magazines• misc ephemera (menus,

packaging,• virtual (publications, apps• clothing graphics (t-shirts, etc.)

• Current and/or Historical• records and documents• images• description

• Qualitative Data• Graphic constructions (dialectic)

• Responses and extrapolations from structural model diagrams

• Construction of propositional landscape(s)

• Visual explorations• image comparisons

• borderless grid• visual organizer

• varied• Writing in response to experience and

observations.• paper(s) - see topics in “Frameworks/

Papers”• Enhance Design Problem

• TBD• Determine Design Objectives

• TBD• Define a design research project with

specific frameworks and methods (reproducible).

• Determine Channels of Distribution• DI publication• Conference presentations and papers• other publications

• Are channels affordable and effective?• TBD

• Transformation (Berlin & Oakland, August-October 2012)• Design Prototype Graphics (see divergence)

• contact sheets• by categories/typologies

• color• font• usage/context• voice (authority, commerce,

vernacular…)• Map images• Analyze images

• detonation • connotation/semantics• language type

• Test on members of target/audience• Share with DI Berlin group (WP?)• Peer review

• Are graphics appropriate?• TBD

• Test in small scale environment• DI post and/or publication• blog?

• Was the test successful?• TBD

• Re-evaluate design objectives?• TBD

• Convergence (Oakland, October-January 2012)• Roll out full scale• Measure effectiveness• Recommend improvements

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The Metropolis immerses its occupants in a dense visual (and graphic) environment, an organic ecology of visual code, an urban visual language, a graphic landscape. It is highly mediated and deeply annotated. Cultural conventions and mythologies create our perception of the city. Typographic typologies comprise a graphic ecology as do the conventions of advertisements, signage and wayfinding, and every other form of graphic visual.

Yuri Lotman’s theory of the semiotic continuum, the semiosphere, models itself on the biosphere. It is a contained, self-regulating ecological system of and by language. Like the biosphere, the semiosphere can be seen both as a whole and as an interconnected, interdependent, systemic complex; a semiotic organism of nested semiotic organisms.

In Lotman’s theory, the primary task of culture “is in structurally organizing the world around man2…” Within the semiosphere, language functions as a “diecasting mechanism” creating an “intuitive sense of structuredness that with its transformation of the “open” world of realia into a “closed” world of names, forces people to treat as structures those phenomena whose structuredness, at best, is not apparent.”3

We might imagine that in the highly mediated landscape of contemporary culture, graphic/visual language (a complex of typologies and forms evolved from the larger and more general sphere of language and a subset within the semiosphere) plays a significant role as a “diecasting mechanism of culture structuring reality into textual/visual “names”.4 We design reality which defines us. Or as Tony Fry states “Humans design, but are, in turn, designed by what results from this designing — be it as things, symbolic forms or traditions.”5

The city is comprised (partly) by a graphic and semiotic landscape that covers the urban field, the geographic surface. It does not adorn, but rather builds (or as the German “bild” which is to picture) creating structure of the social sphere. The complex and interconnected and interdependent structure that the graphic semiosphere creates is pervasive but not readily apparent. It is a complex of interconnected subsets (like biomes within the biosphere) within the cultural ecology of the semiosphere (a semiome.) It is how we picture (and so build) the city.

The design artifacts of the Ad Hoc Atlas Berlin6, some of which are presented here, are records and investigations of wanderings in and observations of the graphic semiosphere(s) of Berlin.

Attempted here is the preliminary mapping of some infinitesimal graphic semiomes, here specifically of Berlin as a City of Design. The geographic location and boundaries (or nodes)

WAndErInG BErLIn’S Gr APHIc SEMIoSPHErE1

1in DesignInquiry/DesignCities Berlin catalog, 2013

2Lotman, Yuri. M., Uspensky, B. A. and Mihaychuk, George. “On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture.” New Literary History 9, no. 2 (January 1, 1978): p. 213

3ibid

4Clearly other forms of aesthetic production are at work here. Film, television, literature, art, the multi-variant forms of the Internet all have significant roles. All of these forms, and others, constitute subsets of the semiosphere. Here, I am limiting my argument to graphic design. This would include all graphic forms and would cross over various media.

5Fry, Tony. “Designing Betwixt Design’s Others.” Design Philosophy Papers 2003/04, no. 6 (2003).

6The Ad Hoc Atlas is an ongoing project. A container for creative and investigative methodologies and exercises. It presupposes that the methods will evolve, die, emerge, linger, loiter, denote, deny, counter and be in a constant state of flux.

of the semiomes are determined by two rationales 1) from a survey of design professionals, and 2) from the excursions performed by the DesignCities group [citation]. Locations are compared on a map of Berlin (do these show some patterns or tendencies?) Image data of small and discrete elements of the graphic semiosphere were collected as geolocated photographs and organized by region. It is important to note that a complete set of the elements of the graphic semiosphere is impossible to create due to scale (incalculable) and the constant shifting nature of the sphere. A prototype for a Semiospheric Metabolic Reader was proposed and presented here as a way for the city to observe it’s own semantic psyche. It is both reader and transmitter. It scans the vast landscape of the graphic semiosphere recording the discrete elements while also projecting these across the city as an inflective upon the semiosphere in a semantic causal loop.


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Yuri Lotman’s theory of the semiotic continuum, the semiosphere (modeling itself on the biosphere) is a contained, self-regulating ecological system structured by language. Like the biosphere, it can be seen both as a whole and as an interconnected, interdependent, systemic complex; a semiotic organism of nested semiotic organisms.

In Lotman’s theory, the primary task of culture “is in structurally organizing the world around man1 …” with language functioning as a “diecasting mechanism” creating an “intuitive sense of structuredness that with its transformation of the “open” world of realia into a “closed” world of names, forces people to treat as structures those phenomena whose structuredness, at best, is not apparent.”2

I would argue that in the highly mediated landscape of contemporary culture, graphic/visual language (a subset, or semiome, within the larger and more general semiosphere) plays a significant role as a “diecasting mechanism. It structures the “open” world of reality into a “closed” world of visual “names”. It structures and forms reality.3 We design reality. Or as Tony Fry states “Humans design, but are, in turn, designed by what results from this designing — be it as things, symbolic forms or traditions.”4

BERlin GRAPHiC SEmiOmE: GOOGlE imAGE SEARCH “BERlin” 05/08/2012, 23:45:18 GmT

1Lotman, Yuri. M., Uspensky, B. A. and Mihaychuk, George. “On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture.” New Literary History 9, no. 2 (January 1, 1978): 213

2ibid

3Clearly other forms of aesthetic production are at work here. Film, television, literature, art, the multi-variant forms of the Internet all have significant roles. All of these forms, and others, constitute subsets of the semiosphere. For the sake of this work, I am limiting my argument to graphic design. This would include all graphic forms and would cross over various media.

4Fry, Tony. “Designing Betwixt Design’s Others.” Design Philosophy Papers 2003/04, no. 6 (2003). http://desphilosophy.com/dpp/dpp_journal/back_issues/paper5_Fry/dpp_paper5.html.


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Semiosphere Model: detail and zoom of interior.

Semiosphere snapshot: detail of edge and interior surface

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SEmiOSPHERE mOdElinG

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“… all semiotic space may be regarded as a unified mechanism (if not organism). In this case, primacy does not lie in one or another sign, but in the “greater system”, namely the semiosphere. The semiosphere is that same semiotic space, outside of which semiosis itself cannot exist.”

Lotman, Yuri. “On the Semiosphere.” Translated by William Clark. Sign Systems Studies 33, no. 1 (2005).p. 208


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Semiosphere snapshot: Running Difference Image of Berlin Graphic Semiosphere Total (left to right) 06, 07, 08, 09/08/2012

CONTACTED DESIGNERS: AND RESPONSES

• Werner Bohr [0]• Thomas Castro [no response]• Akiem Helmling [0]• Connie Hwang [no response]• Ruth Klotzel [0]• Mervyn Kurlansky [0]• Daisuke Nitta [5]• Robert Peters [1]• Pedro Pineda [6]• Susanne Radtke [6]• Rachele Riley [5]• Eric Rodenbeck [no response]• Brenda Sanderson [no response]• Erik Spiekerman [no response]• Lucille Tenazas [0]• Teal Triggs [no response]• Min Wang [0]

LETTER SENT TO DESIGNERS April 2012:

Hello

I am contacting you for a very brief survey based on your expertise in design and, possibly, some knowledge of the city of Berlin.

I am participating in DesignInquiry / DesignCities: Berlin this August as part of my larger project, the Ad Hoc Atlas, and will be examining what makes Berlin a “City of Design”, a designation bestowed by UNESCO in 2005.

The request is quite simple and painless (I hope!), so please indulge me if you can:

• Please list three (or, ideally, more - as many as you would like) places in Berlin that would support the proposition that Berlin is a “City of Design” (see below for more information). Thegoalistogetdesigners’perspectivesofthe“designcity” based on their own experience. Anything you can recommend is useful for the project.

• Please only list places that can be found on a map (with addresses if obscure and/or not likely found via Google), as all of the results of this survey will be mapped - for instance, pleasedonotlist“whereverIfindcurrywurst”.

• Simply reply to this email with your list.

Information: Feel free to see DesignInquiry / DesignCities: Berlin and UNESCO’sBerlindesignationannouncement,andUNESCO’sDesign Cities for more info, if you are interested, but it is not necessary as I think it is appropriate for you, considering your position in design, to make an assessment of what are some design qualities, institutions, nodes, etc. of the city.

I would like to attribute your results to you, but if you would rather I not, I can also make your results anonymous. Please let me know.

Please also feel free to forward to anyone you feel would be able to contribute.--------------------------------------Some musings/advice:You can certainly list the clear and logical answers, such as museums that exhibit design, Universities with prominent design programs, famous public works of design, but I would ask that you also include some things that YOU feel are contributors to what makes Berlin unique as a city of design. Stores. Particular public spaces.

For me, although this is a bit tangential (and I have never been to Berlin even), I might include the Dorotheenstadt cemetery as itincludesthegravesofsuchseminalfiguresofaestheticsandthoughtasBertoltBrecht,JohannGottlieb,JohnHeartfield,GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Herbert Marcuse. While this is not design directly, it does speak to an intellectual legacy that would support a design community, an aesthetic, a philosophy, and tradition.

For instance for my home city of San Francisco I might list the following:

• SFMOMA (regular exhibitions of design)• AIGAoffice(secondlargestchapterintheUS)• William Stout Bookstore (huge selection of design and

typography books)• San Francisco Center for the Book• California College of the Arts• Parklets• Adobeoffices

Thanks in advance for your interest and time.

Joshua Singer

SuRvEY: A TOPOGRAPHY Of dESiGn: dESiGn CiT Y BERlin & EmAil RESPOnSES

RESPONSES:Akiem Helmling: Akiem Helmling was born 1971 in Heidelberg, Germany. During the years 1994–1998 he studied Graphic Design at the Fachhochschule Mannheim. During 1998/2000 he had a postgraduate study at the KABK in Den Haag, the Netherlands.

Together with Sami Kortemäki and Bas Jacobs, he founded Underware in 1999. Underware is a (typo)graphic designstudio which is specialized in designing and producing typefaces.

[AK] “I am sorry, but I can not help you with that so much. I lived for a while in Berlin, and from that experience I have a slightly different idea. For me Berlin is quite a lot, but no the City of Design. I am sorry.”

[JS] How long did you live there?

[AK] “A year. Since then I visit the city every year.”

--------------------------------------------------Robert Peters:Designer and principal of CIRCLE, an award-winning communications consultancy based in Winnipeg, Canada.

Former president (2001-2003) of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda).Authorofthebook‘WorldwideIdentity:InspiredDesignfromForty

Countries.’Foreign feature correspondent for Communication Arts magazine.Active internationally as a design strategist, policy advisor, writer, juror,

and guest lecturer.Specialties:Strategic Planning, Marketing, Design Management,

Corporate Identity & Branding, Information Systems, Communication Design

[http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertlpeters]

[RP] “Unfortunately I am not an expert re: Berlin. I have only been there on two occasions; once in 1989 just before the wall came down; the second time in 2003, attending the Icsid General Assembly (when I was Icograda president).

The one outstanding design/culture venue that I recommend to anyone visiting Berlin is the Jewish Museum... outstanding in every regard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Museum,_Berlin”

--------------------------------------------------Ruth Klotzel:Graduate from Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de Sao Paulo in 1982, since then working as Graphic Designer whether in projects of public and private companies or in the education sector.HeadofDesignGraficoEstudioInfinito,tookpartineventsand

publications in Brazil and abroad, besides carrying out the project and teaching activities, and participating in events and committees in ADG-Brazil.

Co-founder of ADG-Brazil, in 1989, being 4 times its director and representing it in 2001 at the Icograda Regional Meeting in Havana and in the Icograda Congress in Johannesburg. Is also one of the directors of the NGO Mundareu (www.mundareu.org.br)

Ruth Klotzel served on the 2003-2005 Icograda board as Vice President.

[http://www.icograda.org/members/members/member_list409.htm]

[RK] “…unfortunately i’ve never been to berlin!!! (though i have a german passport!!!!!).”

--------------------------------------------------Mervyn Kurlansky: Icograda President 2003-2005.

Born in South Africa, Mervyn trained in London, then practiced with Knoll International and Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes before co-founding Pentagram in 1972. Since 1993 Mervyn has lived and worked in Denmark.Mervynisaprolificdesigner,consultant,author,lecturer,and

juror. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers, the International Society of Typographic Designers, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacture & Commerce and a member of AllianceGraphiqueInternationaleandDanskDesignerer.Mervyn’sworkhas been widely published, has won many international awards, and is in numerous permanent collections around the world.

Mervyn was chairman of the Icograda London Design Seminar from 1996 to 1999. In 2001 Graphis published a book created by Mervyn entitled‘Mastersofthe20thCentury:TheIcogradaDesignHallofFame’,which depicts the work of more than 100 leading international graphic designers who spoke at the Seminars between 1974 and 1999.

Mervyn is President of Icograda (2003-2005). He joined the Icograda board at the 19th Icograda General Assembly in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2001 as President Elect.


[MK] “I do not know berlin at all.”

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Rachele Riley:Rachele Riley was born in Washington, D.C. in 1972. She received a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from New York University (1994), a preliminary diploma in Communication Design from the Burg Giebichenstein School of Art and Design in Halle, Germany (2001), and a Master of Fine Arts in Design/Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005). Riley is the recipient of research grants from The University of North Carolina Charlotte (2007) and The University of the Arts (2011), and a VCU Graduate Studies Fellowship (2003–2004). Riley has been Artist-in-Residence at the Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts in Nebraska (2006) and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (2007). Her videos, prints, and drawings have been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, and her design works have been published in Print Magazine (Annual, 2008) and Motion Design (Woolman, 2004). She is Assistant Professor at The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.Riley’sworkisaresearch-andcreative-basedinquiryintothe

interpretationofconflictandinstitutionsofmemory.Hercurrentprojectsfocusonvisualsystemsformappingtheweblandscape,‘OnceaDay,’and experiential approaches to archiving the nuclear destruction of the NevadaTestSite(YuccaFlat),in‘TheEvolutionofSilence.’Addressingartistic methodology, mapping, and narrative pattern, Riley integrates a variety of media, ranging from time- and web-based technology to drawing, typography, and collage.

[http://www.linkedin.com/in/racheleriley]

[RR]“The Bauhaus Archive/Museum for DesignBauhaus-Archiv / Museum für GestaltungKlingelhöferstraße 14D - 10785 Berlinhttp://www.bauhaus.de/bauhausarchiv/

Gestalten SpaceSophie-Gips-HöfeSophienstraße 2110178 Berlinhttp://www.gestalten.com/

MindpiratesSchlesische Str. 38Haus F, 3. HH10997 Berlinhttp://mindpirates.org/verein/?page_id=71

Künstlerhaus BethanienKottbusser Straße 1010997 – BerlinGermany

Pop Up Store BerlinSigurd LarsenWeinmeisterstraße 2, Berlin-Mittehttp://sigurdlarsen.eu/projects/pop-up-store-berlin/

DMY International Design FestivalAirport Berlin TempelhofColumbiadamm 10, 12101 Berlinhttp://dmy-berlin.com/”

--------------------------------------------------Lucille TenazasParsons the New School for Design, National Design Award in Communications Design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2002, AIGA West Coast President 1996-98

[LT] “I have never been to Berlin, so unfortunately, I will not be able to answer your questions.”

--------------------------------------------------Min WangMin Wang is Professor of Graphic Design at China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), one of the most important art schools in China. He currently serves as the Dean of School of Design and the Design Director for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Committee (BOCOG). Min Wang received his B.A.(1982) in Graphic Art from China National Academy of Fine Arts and M.F.A. (1988) from Yale University School of Art. Since 1998, he has been the Design Director at Square Two Design. From 1990-98 he served as Design Manager, Senior Art Director, Senior Designer at Adobe Systems. He has been a visiting fellow in Germany at Akademe der Bildenden Kunste, Munich and Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin. In 1989, he began lecturing in graphic design at Yale University School of Art, teaching graduate students until 1997.Min’sworkhasbeenexhibitedinternationallyinshowcasessuchasthe

Biennial of Graphic Design, Brno, Czech Republic; Graphic Design Show in Beijing, China; Type Directors Club Exhibition, New York; Print Annual; and the International Poster Biennial, Lahti, Finland and in the collection of Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich Kunstgewerbemuseum, Switzerland. Min has been appointed Honorary Professor by Shanghai University, Fine Art College.


[MW] “I am currently very busy on school work, it is the end of semester, so I will not be able to do the survey.”

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Pedro PinedaPedro was born in the Canary Islands, after studying Design & Technology in London, he moved to Berlin where he is developing different ways to apply collective & creative problem solving to challenges that affect us as individuals or as society. He sees design as a tool to create experiences. For him “is not enough to look at the isolated product or service but at the whole experience that we want to create”

His design work ranges from facilitating MakerLabs to the creation of parties, including all the single components which need to be there to create the envisioned experience. He works through openness that everything should be Open so that whatever we do can be shared and build upon.

[http://betahaus.de/2012/11/pedro-pineda/]

He is co-developing numerous projects like MakerLab, Enable Berlin, We Creative People, and Open Design City.

[PP] “Dear Joshua,

I would like to suggest some places for your inquire which i think represent berlin as a city of Designing- Betahaus: Not because it is a co working space, but because they are in constant prototyping and iteration. The place was build with cheap materials and what they could find (sketch prototype) so that they could test the idea, and ever since they are constantly adding on/ changing to improve the concept, which then is being exported elsewhere. I find Berlin permits things to happen, and to be tried out. - Design Research Lab: Because it invites the design community to think deeper in the design process further than just the interaction between the user and the design (i.e.: Filosofical and political values, ..). I think Berlin encourages people to think about what the are proposing and be critical- MakerLab: Because invites people not just to talk about their ideas, but to make them. Berlin encourages people to give something back, because you get a lot from it. (this is a nomadic space, but the office is found in Open Design City- Weissensee kunksthoch schüle. The space and workshops inspire every one that visit its, I have never study there, but go there sometimes to work on my projects. Berlin is open, there is no barriers, not even in the underground. - Sysiphos: Because everything is allowed, you can go there as you are, and celebrate life. Berlin is a city that allows, not criticizes

I think this are some of the places which i think celebrate some aspects of Berlin. They are just some examples, and i think there could be many more. But maybe you can tell me first if what i am saying helps you somehow. In any case, i think the biggest supporter of design (and any other creative endeavor) is Berlin time. One of the biggest resins i moved to Berlin was because here (as compared to paris, london, madrid, barcelona….) people have time. Time to do something spontaneous, time to not have a totally overbooked life.

I hope it helps in your work.

Best regards

Pedro Pineda”

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Susanne Radtke Professor, Hochschule Ulm, Germany

[SR] Hello Joshua,

sorry, that I haven´t replied earlier. Unfortunately it was not possible.First I had the workshop and excursion with Nancy and that was quite a bit of work. Then I got sick and still are.

I organized 3 amazing appointments at international agencies such as Pentagram and Art+Com. I guess these visits and also the DMY International Design Festival were the highlights for the students in Berlin. Then we went to the Dokumenta.

Right now my students and I are working on the documentation which will be online in about 2 weeks. I will send you the link.

I wished we could do once a workshop in Ulm together.

I plan to come with my students mid-May 2013 to do once again a 3-day long workshop.

I replied your questions below.Susanne

IDZ | Internationales Design Zentrum Berlin e. V. Flughafen Tempelhof, Bauteil D2Columbiadamm 1012101 Berlinhttp://www.idz.de

ART+COMKleiststr. 23-26 | 10787 Berlin | www.artcom.de

Die Gestalten Verlag GmbH & Co. KGMariannenstr. 9-1010999 Berlinhttp://www.gestalten.com

MetaDesign AGLeibnizstraße 6510629 Berlinhttp://www.metadesign.com

TYPO BerlinFontShop AGBernd RudolfProjektleiter Design KonferenzenBergmannstraße 10210961 Berlinhttp://typotalks.com”

--------------------------------------------------Daisuke NittaProjekttriangle Design Studio, Stuttgart

[DN] Hello Josh!

It’s great to hear from you.Thank you for considering for this inquiry.Hope you are doing well.

I’m not sure if I could be of any help on this.Hope my lists help.

Meiré und Meiréhttp://www.meireundmeire.de/recent

Buchstaben Museumhttp://www.buchstabenmuseum.de/

Berlinalehttp://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.html

Berghain.http://www.berghain.de/

Duve Berlinhttp://www.duveberlin.com/

This may help you: http://unlike.net/

I will forward your mail to friends of mine in Germany.They could give you more resourceful information.

Good luck on your search!

Best,Daisuke”

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DesignInquiry / DesignCities excursion documentation sites, 6-11 August 2012

Survey design nodes from designer responses.

mAP Of SuRvEY RESulTS: dESiGn nOdES/vORTiCES


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SAmPlES Of ElEmEnTS Of GRAPHiC SEmiOmES Of dESiGn CiT Y BERlin: REGiOn 1, nOdES 1–3

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rEAdInG tHE urBAn SEMIoSPHErIc MEtABoLISM

historic forms(closed system)

All quotes:Lotman, Yuri. M., Uspensky, B. A. and Mihaychuk, George. “On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture.” New Literary History 9, no. 2 (January 1, 1978): 211–232. doi:10.2307/468571.

Culture never encompasses everything, but forms instead a marked-off sphere. Culture is understood only as a section, a closed-off area against the background of nonculture.

… against the background of nonculture, culture appears as a system of signs. p 211

The longevity of texts forms a hierarchy within the culture, one usually identified with the hierarchy of values. The texts considered most valuable are those of a maximum longevity from the point of view, and according to the standard, of the culture in question, or panchronic texts (although “shifted” cultural anomalies are also possible whereby the highest value is ascribed to the momentary). This may correspond to the hierarchy of materials upon which the texts are affixed -and to the hierarchy of places and of the means of their preservation. p. 215


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semantic value

current forms(open system)

Language structure is abstracted from the material of languages; it becomes independent and is transferred to an ever-increasing range of phenomena which begin to behave in the system of human communication as language and thus become elements of culture. p. 229

BERlin SEmiOSPHERiC mETABOliC REAdER: viSuAlizinG SEmiOmES

A prototype for a Semiospheric Metabolic Reader is proposed and presented here. A prosthetic, it allows the city to observe it’s own semantic psyche. It is both reader and transmitter. It scans the vast landscape of the graphic semiosphere recording its discrete elements and then projects these across the city as an inflective upon the semiosphere in a semantic causal loop.

Concept sketches, Berlin, August 2012


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Semiographic metabolic readings: scale = 0.045

Prosthetic Semiospheric Metabolic Reader

Semiographic metabolic readings: scale = 0.00037

Prosthesis Metabolic Feed: Categorized by typology and value

Value readings for current and historical semantic metabolic transmissions in urban surfaces

Inflected back into Semiosphere.

BERlin SEmiOSPHERiC mETABOliC REAdER: viSuAlizinG SEmiOmES

But in order for it to fulfill that role, culture must have within itself a structural “diecasting mechanism.” It is this function that is performed by natural language. It is natural language that gives the members of a social group their intuitive sense of structuredness that with its transformation of the “open” world of realia into a “closed” world of names, forces people to treat as structures those phenomena whose structuredness, at best, is not apparent. p. 213

The fundamental ‘task’ of culture… is in structurally organizing the world around man. Culture is the generator of structuredness, and in this way it creates a social sphere around man which, like the biosphere, makes life possible; that is, not organic life, but social life. p. 213


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All quotes:Lotman, Yuri. M., Uspensky, B. A. and Mihaychuk, George. “On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture.” New Literary History 9, no. 2 (January 1, 1978): 211–232. doi:10.2307/468571.

Culture can be presented as an aggregate of texts; however, from the point of view of the researcher, it is more exact to consider culture as a mechanism creating an aggregate of texts and texts as the realization of culture. p. 218

These appear to us to be the basic features of that complicated semiotic system which we define as culture. Its function is to serve as a memory; its basic feature is self-accumulation. At the dawn of European civilization Heraclitus wrote: “Essential to the psyche is the self-generating logos.”24 He grasped the basic characteristic of culture. p. 227

Aggregate mean for Region 6, Node 4, 06/08/2012 18:25:06

prosthesis pros·the·sis [pros-thee-sis for 1; pros-thuh-sis for 2]noun, plural pros·the·ses [-seez for 1; -seez for 2 ]1. a device, either external or implanted, that substitutes for or

supplements a missing or defective part of the body.2. Grammar, Prosody. the addition of one or more sounds or syllables to

a word or line of verse, especially at the beginning.

Origin: 1545–55; < Late Latin < Greek prósthesis a putting to, addition, equivalent to prós to + thésis a placing; see thesis

pronunciation Main Entry: accentnounDefinition: stress or pitch in pronunciationSynonyms: accentuation, articulation, beat, cadence, emphasis, enunciation, force, inflection, intonation, meter, modulation, pronunciation , rhythm, stroke, timbre, tonality, tone

Main Entry: articulationPart of Speech: nounDefinition: clear, coherent speechSynonyms: delivery, diction, enunciation, expression, pronunciation , saying, speaking, statement, talking, utterance, verbalization, vocalization, voicing

inflect in·flektverb [ with obj. ]1 Grammar change the form of (a word) to express a particular

grammatical function or attribute, typically tense, mood, person, number, case, and gender.• [ no obj. ] (of a word or a language containing such words)

undergo such change.2 vary the intonation or pitch of (the voice), esp. to express mood or feeling.

• influence or color (music or writing) in tone or style.• vary the pitch of (a musical note).

3 technical bend or deflect (something), esp. inward.

http://thesaurus.com

http://dictionary.reference.com

GlOSSARY fOR THE COnSTRuCTiOnS Of THE BERlin PROSTHETiC: SEmiOSPHERiC mETABOliC REAdER


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PROTOT YPE #01.1 SEmiOSPHERiC mETABOliC REAdER OuTPuT


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PROTOT YPE #01.0 SEmiOSPHERiC mETABOliC REAdER OuTPuT (SAmPlES)


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ad hoc atlas: volume two, version one: montreal & berlin

Documents

graphic design

graphic city

atlas berlin

berlin graphic semiome

graphic language

design nodesvortices

topography of design

berlin prosthetic