World projections, Projected Landscapes

Abstract

Landscape and architectural design projects frequently invoke the contents of world atlases in order to situate and legitimate design gestures. This is done by referencing design moves at a relatively 'micro' scale to an implicitly objective 'macro' scale. Atlases typically contain images of the world across these extremes of scale. The whole planet is frequently represented by a range of different maps which unfold the earth's surface in a variety of ways, down to typically orthographic projections of specific localised areas. Thus, even though in a given atlas the maps of these two extremes of the global and the local are systematically related and cross-referenced, there is a different set of cartographic priorities and techniques used for their representation. This rises partly out of the different geometrical challenges posed by flattening a globe and that of flattening complex, irregular landform. The conventions that have arisen have also become influential in the design languages and processes that have emerged in landscape architecture. This paper explores the notion that the cartographic techniques of map projection currently applied at the global scale could be productively engaged at a local scale, both to overcome some of the limitations of orthographic projection, and to continue the development of landscape architecture's repertoire of spatial representation.