José M Cardoso

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.

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.

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.