Rui C Costa

PT / EN

As últimas décadas do séc. XX assistiram a um crescente protagonismo do Design de Informação que, desde então, tem sofrido inúmeras formas e designações, num processo de afirmação e auto descoberta. A proliferação de dados disponíveis deu ao design e em particular a este ramo do desenho para a compreensão, uma visibilidade crescente e a responsabilidade de encontrar, a partir da informação, novos meios para a construção de sentido. Do design à engenharia informática, são várias as disciplinas que convergem hoje nesse desígnio ainda que sob diferentes modelos e ferramentas. Esta convergência promove uma comparação entre modelos, que tendem a ser tanto mais valorizados quanto mais objectivas as representações. De Playfair a Bertin, as representações gráficas dos últimos duzentos anos têm-se situado no âmbito de disciplinas como a Economia, Sociologia ou a Gestão, explorando metáforas funcionais com vista à evidência da tradução numérica. O Design, enquanto mediador cultural e através do Desenho, tende a acrescentar ao mesmo exercício uma dimensão narrativa ou ilustrativa, convocando a própria existência do autor na interpretação dos mesmos dados numéricos. Com esta investigação, novos processos de semiose se oferecem, associando à objectividade dos dados quantitativos, a subjectividade da cultura formulada a partir do indivíduo enquanto intérprete. Na procura do conhecimento, reconhece-se assim que o desenho da informação ganha competências pela mediação da experiência, religando ética, técnica e estética.

The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the growing importance of information design, which since then has been characterised and named in many ways, through processes of affirmation and self- discovery. The flood of available data gave design – and namely this field of design for understanding – an increased visibility and a responsibility to find new ways of making sense through information. From design to computer sciences, there are several disciplines that converge in this endeavour, although different tools and models are employed. This convergence enables a comparison between models of representation, which tend to be more respected when neutral and rational. From Playfair to Bertin, graphical representations of the past two hundred years have been produced mainly within disciplines such as Economy, Sociology or Management, exploring functional metaphors in pursuit of evidence through numerical translation. Design, as cultural mediator and through Drawing, tends to add to the same exercise a narrative or illustrative dimension, summoning the author’s own existence in the interpretation of the same numerical data. With this research, new processes of semiosis are offered, by adding to the objectivity of quantitative data the subjectivity of culture, conveyed through the individual as interpreter. In the search for knowledge, information design gains skills through the mediation of experience, reconnecting ethics, technics and aesthetics.

This abstract refers to an ongoing research entitled "Maps Tailored to the Body of Places: Drawing Strategies against the Indifference of Representation", in which we study the importance of the creation and use of images in the representation of places. We question the role of design in this process, which according to Branco & Providência assumes itself as cultural mediation.
Given the technological capability of automatic representation of the territory and cities, like the street view mode of Google Maps, we can question if there is still a role for the designer in this process? Is today anachronistic the hand that draws the map?
We argue that it is the place that determines the design project. In this sense, we intend to answer these questions through the practical application of design strategies that contribute to stimulate the sense of places. All strategies are based in observational drawing of places landscape, as a privileged tool for the designer. In this particular abstract we approach only one of the strategies adopted in this research — representing places through its absence — applied in three places of Porto city: Clérigos tower, Terreiro da Sé and Dom Luiz I bridge.
A mixed method of reflection and action was used. Mental maps were made to identify the places, conciliating them with three techniques adopt in its representation. Techniques like very slow contour drawing, the reserve as a suspension of the elements of the landscape and finally, the deformation of the drawing according to the location of the observer. The set of three techniques applied, synthesizes a design strategy that opposes the indifference of representation.
This drawing work is not about creating wayfinding maps, destined to a literal orientation already solved by the technological ubiquity, but about Genius Loci mapping, synthesizing reproducible strategies for other authors.

This text belongs to a chapter of an ongoing investigation into the graphic descriptions of places. This chapter deals with the evolution of the descriptions of the World throughout the three eras of history: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modernity.
In this article we present only the Middle Ages in a historical approach, and in a chronological sequence, showing examples of the desire to know the world and to describe it graphically, at a time when a landscape idea begins to form.
We argue that although the Middle Ages were marked by a divestiture of various domains of knowledge, with implications for geography, there were also very important advances in the field of the representation of places.
Towards this narrative we realize how the representations of the territory and the idea of landscape are fruit of the thought and the vision of each time, not always with practical objectives of navigation or orientation. These images also served to create views of the world and the organization of society according to an ideal of legitimation and maintenance of power.

Keywords: Vision, Visualization, Middle ages, Representation of places, Design of maps.

In this research we defend the mediator role of the Designer in the representation of places, which uses drawing as a privileged tool. In this sense, we question if each place demands for its own representation. Maps "tailor made" to the body places. A mixed method of reflection / action will be adopted. The different scopes of intervention and their implications will be mapped regularly through diagrams (mind maps). Then, drawing strategies will be applied, in the representation of places. It is intended to identify strategies of significant and different representation of the places, that can be put in practice by other designers, elsewhere. The observation drawing emerges as an enhancer of an experience, not dictated by the cartographic representation codes. We identify as intervention areas, the freedom of choice, the significant experience of drawing in situ, the white sheet as an open field of possibilities and the place that dictates its own image. We start from drawing as a representational medium, to arrive at drawing as a way of knowing places. Keywords: Drawing as representation, drawing as knowing, spirit of place, landscape drawing, map design.