Visualization, Design, Cognition: Describing Places through Drawing

Abstract

In his essay Visualization and Cognition: Drawing Things Together (2012), Bruno Latour explains a complex relationship between visualization and cognition, employing drawing as a crucial tool in describing a specific geographic place. In this respect Latour tells a significant story: in the 18^th century, the explorer and geographer La Pérouse travelled along the Pacific Ocean following Louis XVI’s request to ‘bring back’ a map of the discovered places. After reaching a land called Sakhalin, he asked an old Chinese man to describe it. La Pérouse was surprised to see a peninsula drawn in detail on the sand. As the tide was rising, a young man quickly reproduced the drawing on La Pérouse’s notebook in order to ‘bring back’ the sketch of the place. The story is open to many diverse considerations, pointing out the differences between Western and Eastern cultures as regards drawing: a clear analogy with the sand drawings in the Zen Gardens where the signs are traced and constantly remade; on the other hand, in the Western modern Age we can see, a way to use drawing for design deeply rooted in graphical practice and visuality. Anyway, in my opinion the most relevant point is strictly related to the ‘things’ that drawing should ‘bring in’ and ‘bring out’ – in Latour’s own words – when describing a place graphically. The way we employ to outline the geographical and anthropic features of a context – in other words how we synthetize the main characters by drawing – has a long history and today it seems to be gaining a new interest in the fields of architecture, urban and landscape planning. This paper intends to face this issue both investigating the theoretical framework around the relationship between visualization, drawing and cognition, and bringing significant examples coming from the current graphic production.