Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

186953

Drawing the urban highway

mobile representations in design and architecture

Sue Robertson

pp. 129-149

Abstract

Following an examination of the elevated highway's diagrammatic and machinic qualities and its evocation as a cinematic sensorium (Robertson, 2007) the chapter will look at how architectural drawings, and the way they are interpreted, construct mobility in certain ways. The relationships and dependencies of graphic representations and lived experiences are examined as well as the shifting and accumulating discourses that arise between the drawn intention and realised design. Attempts have been made to represent the experience of driving through a development of notations (Appleyard et al., 1964), analogous with the role of Labanotation in dance choreography, in the context of the design of highways. In this chapter I will consider the paradoxes inherent in both the diagrammatic conceptualisations of future motorised cities and the representations of the experience of driving in the city that were developed at key moments when speed and technology were celebrated (see Dimendberg, 1995), for example, the development of motorways in England in the 1970s (Merriman, 2006). These will be compared with subsequent changes in focus to walking from urban designers such as Gordon Cullen and his 'serial vision" (Cullen, 1961) of experiencing the city (Gosling, 1996) and the evocative responses to, and mapping of, urban journeys as discussed by psychogeographers (Self, 1993).

Publication details

Published in:

Murray Lesley, Upstone Sara (2014) Researching and representing mobilities: transdisciplinary encounters. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 129-149

DOI: 10.1057/9781137346667_7

Full citation:

Robertson Sue (2014) „Drawing the urban highway: mobile representations in design and architecture“, In: L. Murray & S. Upstone (eds.), Researching and representing mobilities, Dordrecht, Springer, 129–149.