Theoretical Currents II: Architecture and its Geographical Horizons

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In Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, the geographic impulse maps not only the known world, but also the inhabited world – the world of cities, towns and architecture. The cartographic drive to realise the phenomenal experience of place, territory, nation, in tangible and visible analogues such as maps, and less tangible ideas in the representations of dominion, cultivation, and culture is still with us today.

Our present age of globalisation has witnessed a growing interest in the potential affinities between the theories and methodologies of geography and architecture. Manifested in the intersecting relationships between notions of region, geophysical terrain, landscape, topography and architectural space, this development has contributed to an emerging field of enquiry. We see this for example in the deployment of geographical techniques and terminologies in architectural and urban design, and the appropriation (or transformation) of traditional architectural concepts (such as scale and proportion) to a matrix of spatio-temporal relationships.

This conference proposes to assemble a group of thinkers who examine this topic from both a contemporary and historical perspective, highlighting how developments in surveying, cartography, geology, perspective, agriculture, trade, politics, transport and warfare have contributed in varying ways to the perception and representation of architecture as a geographical concern.

Negotiating Boundaries

Perceptions of Distance

Cartographies of the New/Old Worlds

Unstable Geographies 

Roadways and Trajectories

Architecture as Geographic Mapping

Pilgrimage and Tourism

Trans-cultural Geographies

Design and the Geographic Impulse

Sustaining the Agricultural Terrain

Architecture, Empire and the Oecumene

Landscape as Reflective/Poetic Terrain