Designers are challenged with the responsibility of bringing form to the formless, of bringing order to the chaos. It is designers' intent, in this world of ceaseless mobility, that the created forms differentiate a slice of the human experience from the vast connectiveness of highways and fast-food drive-throughs to places of memory and conversation.
The French anthropologist Marc Auge illustrates this point by drawing an analogy between modern and medieval maps. Each inherently contains a different purpose. Modern maps are amazing feats of science and technology. Since the advent of air travel and satellites, we create hyper-accurate maps detailing roads and locations down to amazing decimal points. No quantitative measure is missed, as these maps form an “inventory of geographical knowledge.” Medieval maps describe a journey narrative. “Route describers” explain the purpose of each step, and “doing” and “seeing” create a history of journey. The relationship between the earth, the sky, and fellow travelers remains the essence of “map.”
This design must embrace the means by which people traverse to this site. Our challenge on this project will be not only creating a beautiful piece of artwork or functional driveway entrance, but also creating memory of education and history of conversation - experiences that people hold as they move from this place.
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