Cours Semestre 7 - 2 enseignements au choix

Educational objectives

Subjective Mapping: Spaces, Places and Perceptions

Class exclusively in English Master – S7 – Arts Plastiques (APV)

During their bachelor’s (Licence) cycle, architecture students learned—and continue to learn—to analyse, represent and transform space through a range of approaches. This course complements these by introducing another toolbox of artistic approaches for investigating spatial situations through experience, perception, experimentation and critical reflection, thereby broadening the range of ways in which they may observe, interpret and engage with places. Students are invited to enrich these approaches by drawing on their current and previous projects, as well as on architectural projects studied during the preceding years.

Through a progressive sequence of artistic investigations focused on subjective mapping and related artistic protocols, students develop a repertoire of investigative methods that can be mobilised throughout their architectural studies and future practice. These methods provide practical strategies for questioning assumptions, overcoming creative impasses and reframing spatial questions from new perspectives.

By the end of the semester, students will have acquired additional conceptual and practical tools for investigating space through artistic practice as future architects. More than learning a series of artistic techniques, they will have developed greater stretch in the ways they observe, interpret and approach architectural situations. The course is therefore conceived as a complement to their existing architectural knowledge and skills. As it is taught entirely in English, it also enables students to develop increasing ease in discussing artistic and architectural concepts and in using disciplinary vocabulary relevant to international architectural contexts

Course content

Subjective mapping is approached not as conventional cartography but as an artistic process through which lived experience becomes a mode of spatial inquiry. Movement, perception, memory, traces, encounters and attention become materials for investigation, enabling students to construct alternative readings of places beyond conventional forms of representation. Rather than opposing objective analysis, subjective mapping complements it by revealing spatial relationships and qualities that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Here, “subjective” does not mean arbitrary or purely personal. These situated observations can reveal spatial qualities and relationships that conventional forms of representation and analysis may overlook.

- Students are introduced to and explore a selection of subjective mapping protocols and are invited to analyse selected spatial situations. Students first explore several subjective mapping protocols, including examples discussed by Karen O'Rourke in Walking and Mapping. They then adapt, transform or invent protocols of their own.

- Informal exploratory drawing continues these mapping investigations.

- Cut-up introduces fragmentation, displacement and recombination. It has been used by artists and writers in diverse contexts and is used here as a way of disrupting habitual patterns of thought and generating unexpected spatial readings.

Performative activations—distinct from performance per se—engage physical movement, action and collective exchange. The theme of the collective activation will be chosen for its architectural relevance and will address a collectively identified architectural question, site or concern.

- These approaches can subsequently be transferred, directly or indirectly, to architectural observation and project development.

- The semester culminates in a project completed either individually or in small groups. Throughout the semester, students are encouraged to move continually between these artistic investigations and their own architectural studio projects, as well as their previous learning and research.

Each investigation builds on the previous ones. Lectures, discussions, analyses of artworks and practical sessions accompany this progression. Artistic references are approached as propositions for inquiry rather than models for imitation.

The complementary notions of abandon (in the sense of letting go) and holding provide one of the underlying conceptual frameworks. Abandon encourages openness to uncertainty, unexpected encounters and emerging possibilities, while holding introduces continuity, structure and critical articulation.

The final project synthesises the conceptual, critical and practical investigations developed throughout the semester.

Required work

Students participate actively in lectures, discussions, analyses of artistic references and practical sessions. They carry out observational and experimental investigations, explore and adapt subjective mapping protocols, and progressively develop their own artistic inquiry. They document their working process visually and in writing and undertake independent work between sessions. The semester concludes with a final visual project, completed individually or in small groups, accompanied by a short written statement of three-quarters of a page to one and a half pages.

Bibliography

Karen O'Rourke, Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2013.

Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History. London, Routledge, 2007.

Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002.

James Corner, “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention,” in Denis Cosgrove (ed.), Mappings. London, Reaktion Books, 1999.

Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. 2nd ed. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2009.

Course materials

Lecture slides; selected readings; visual documentation of artworks, artistic practices and mapping projects; cartographic, photographic and audiovisual references; online resources; and workshop handouts.

Annex to diploma

Artistic exploration of subjective mapping as an approach to representing and investigating architectural and urban environments, as well as thoughts, questions and concerns. Through experimental artistic and mapping practices, students develop complementary observational, analytical and representational tools applicable to architectural study and practice. Class entirely in English.