Mapping.

The “Desert Workshop” is an annual event at ISAD, the Instituto Superior de Arquitectura y Diseño in Chihuahua, in northern Mexico. I was invited as part of a group of professors to participate in this week-long academic event.

The studio began with a mapping investigation with the students of a busy traffic corridor in the town of Chihuahua. This exercise was later used by the group for their design proposal. The students mapped traffic crossings, pedestrian   crossings, locations of accidents, traffic congestion, constructed area versus green area, urban infrastructure, among other variables. Using the mapping diagrams as operative tools, we employed techniques of information graphics discussed by the statistician Edward Tufte in order to understand  the interactions of multiple variables simultaneously; the students’ drawings were intended to be analytical rather than merely representational.