Transscalar Critical
Cartography

      Design-Driven PhD at KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture
   Promotor: Prof.Dr.Corneel Cannaerts,
    Co-Promotor: Prof.Dr. Lidia Gasperoni

Atlases traditionally collect two-dimensional projections of territory on flat media, organized according to scale, location or governance. Yet as critical cartography reveals, maps are not neutral and objective representations of space, but perpetuate existing power structures. While digital technologies have made maps interactive, zoomable, and three-dimensional, they are not less political. Today’s mapping platforms, run by governments and big tech companies, are enabled through a vast technological apparatus of remote sensing, cloud computing, and data centres that deeply impact the territories they represent.

Sky Scalarities - sketched series of scalar perspectives

In my PhD at  Arch KU Leuven I develop a transscalar map and Rhino 3D-model, the Hyperfield, that represents sky imaginaries and atmospheric territory. A hybrid of Hyperobject and social field, the Hyperfield models the atmosphere across multiple scales at once: from the sky surrounding the domestic home, to the satellites in the exosphere. The transscalar map holds and situates encoded relationalities of contemporary sky media and selected historical precedents through analytical architectural drawing. The cartography links to an online interface, the Sky Lexicon, revealing the myth and meaning of a flattened and colonized atmosphere. Hand-drawn situated practices extend this transscalar atlas through the concepts of ecological nonscalability and perspective as a symbolic form, where the scale of the imaginary and territory meet.