Designblog

How do we recognize a map? That is the main question rising when we stand in front of the new decorations that appeared in differed Metro stations in Amsterdam. Together with design bureau Fabrique, Group A architects was responsible for the design [x] and renovation of stations along the Oostlijn Metro in Amsterdam.  Group A has created a design that is not only a return to the basis of the original design’ but also reflects ‘a vision of the future’. In an interview for Grafik.net website, Rene Knip, the main designer of the project, said: I’m taking the walls of stations and starting to tell things, I’m leaving it open — stories that are not understandable but everybody wants to read. I give type the opportunity to mean something, I give the people visual material to build meaning, a visual story that is free to dive in – the way they do it is their story.”

 

Photoshop sketches for visual language tableaus for the renovation of the Oostlijn metro in Amsterdam, 2013

 
When looking at these decorations, they immediately receive the shape of mystery maps revealing unknown places. They become a visualization of a secret landscape or an imaginary place. The reason that we see those unknown images and connect them to maps might be the language that was used in the design of the decorations. The use of red broken lines and empty dots, above a white background, connect us to the visual language of the Metro maps, but also to childhood treasure maps that uncover precious secrets. Knip described that the Metro designs were inspired by childhood experiences.

The Metro stations can perform as a universe on their own. When we look at a Metro map, we find out it is very much composed by straight lines, even though the path in fact is not straight. The maps are not designed in a way that allows you to find your location in the world, but instead they give a relative information of where is your station in the order of the Metro station system. Your location is relative to the route you are on.

In this universe there is an order of actions that you have to perform in order to get to your destination starting with passing your ticket to enter. Once you arrive, you pass your ticket again and go back to the outside world. The Metro maps are the maps of a parallel world, that is connected to the locations outside, but also has existence of its own. You can travel under the city in a parallel universe that its whole reason of existence is to allow you to pass between places. In New York, abandoned Subway stations are becoming a strange space in which things are changing and transforming according to time.

 

The tiling on a platform at Chambers Street has become significantly damaged

 
When we step out of the metro, and in our way out we see the decorations on the wall, it’s clear for us that they don’t try to illustrate the outside world. Why do we still relate ourselves to those maps? We know what it is but we don’t understand it, we recognize it as a metro map but we cannot read it. Maybe the motive of fantasy that they hold, the fact that they are almost something familiar, but not completely, is what gives it its power.

Amsterdam’s Metro map

 
Is it possible that the way the decorations communicates might change with time? when we look back at something in time, we might not understand the meaning of it, but this appearance of something that it constructed by rules might give us the feeling that there is a meaning hiding behind the unknown language. An example for this can be the hieroglyphs found inside the pyramids in Egypt. No one had used the hieroglyphs for more than 1,500 years, but since discovered, people knew that the hieroglyphs are not only decorations on the Egyptian kings’ grave tombs. Even though people believed that the hieroglyphs has a meaning, they were decoded only after hundreds of years, with the discovery of the rosette stone that was found in 1799. The stone is inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone [x] proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

 
Maybe in hundreds of years, the cultures following ours will come across those Metro decorations that has the quality of a secret map or a secret language, and will try to find the meaning lying behind those vague maps. Maybe when that happens, they would be able to find their own Rosetta stone [x}, and give new life to our symbols, that will receive a new form and meaning.

Linear IKEA Store “Transit” Strip Map
 

Map.

I cheated a bit last time by picking a book that was not part of the design section. It could be, because it dealt with cartography, but it’s maps were torn apart and put back together in different ways to form new landscapes; or used as starting points for spatial installations; or written, painted and drawn on; folded, pierced and even torched to make up new worlds.

Water.

A lot on architecture. I drift off and think of how much I would like to go for a swim now. To take a dive in the cold fresh water. A bit muddy probably. The kind of mud that slithers through the space between your toes when you stand on it, before it gives way a few inches under the pressure of your body.

Memory.

Mixing up these keywords doesn’t lead to anything.

Computerwise. Librarylike.

Hitting “memory” does provide for some compelling outcomes. Like “Bodies Voices Memories”, a book that looks at the remembering, speaking and sensing body. Specifically on instances where these abilities are disrupted or displaced by traumatic or physical causes. The book is bursting with text. But I like looking in it. The text has fascinating accompanying pictures and every new chapter title is printed on the folded corner of the previous page.

I end up with “It Crossed My Mind”, a catalogue on an exhibiton of Marijke van Warmerdam at the Kunsthalle Nurnberg in 2000.

Funnily enough it has an abundance of water in it. From showers to bathtubs and lakes. The pages are split in two. A text, sometimes in white or black, but mostly transparent and glossy, moves over the featured photo’s of film stills, installations and sculptures. An empty attic room. A man in folkore with his mouth wide open, a woman doing a headstand in a dress. A red wall.

-NO WONDER IT SOUNDS LIKE LOVING-

,

Not laughing.

Loving.

It’s in fact a map. Of her mind.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: -WA- 1


Entering my three tags in the search engine of the library didn’t lead to any results. At least, I hoped of course to find a book that was at the intersection of all three keywords leading to a publication that delt with designers of Asian witchcraft and mapping their whereabouts.

Fortunately I did find books with every specific tag; one on contemporary Asian architects; one on the map as art; and one on devils, demons, death and damnation. The latter of course sounded very inviting and it is indeed filled with the most fascinating gothic graphics of infernal punishment, public witch executions, demons riding to the Sabbath and Lucifer reigning over the souls of sinners.

On a lighter note, Asian architecture with the Zen-like attitude on dealing with space and the use of water -for tranquility and balance instead of drowning alleged witches- has a certain appeal as well.

But my eye can’t stop getting pulled to the last book of my pile, called “The Map As Art”. Cheating a little bit? Yes. This book is not from the Design department. But it sounds like it’s interestingly bordering on the edge of science, art and design. Cartography assembles scientific data in a technical way and models our reality as to effectively communicate spatial information. But then maps take on a life of their own. They may be worn out, damaged, have decades-old coffee or wine stains on them reminding of holidays or trips effectively pushed to the corners of the memory to make room for new ones. They may be folded so many times that crucial information is deleted, or have scribbles and writings on them that may be even more cryptic than the maps themselves can appear to be on first sight. These alterations seem to be lifted to a higher level in this book, making maps almost into fantastical designers of political landscapes, neighbourhoods and private spaces.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 708.5 har 1

The book I chose is of a faded sort of blue, and has the title “Bamboo” on its hardcover back. This back is graphically shaped as a piece of actual bamboo using shading and divisions. Like how you would see real-live bamboo in real-live nature.
The contrast with the blue, which of course in actuality it isn’t, drew my eyes to the book’s back I guess. Also probably since I was feeling very restless that specific afternoon and was more with my head in the sky than in the neatly organized library smelling of old paper and glue. On top of that it appeared old, and somewhat mysterious. And reminded me of when I was a kid and would always hope to find a forgotten book in the corner of the library that would have a map of a hidden treasure tucked away in it. I remember drawing those maps myself and hiding them in old books in my parents’ bookcase. Then I’d make myself forget, so I could stumble upon a forgotten map and could go on a treasure hunt. In my parents’ backgarden mostly. Or sometimes in the attic, where more secret passages could be created.

The typography of the letters “Bamboo” and in fact the word itself also reminded me of a book featured in a film I once watched when I was young. Probably around the same age as I was when trying to forget my hidden maps. It was about an apprentice-witch who lived in a big house in the English countryside and had to take in three children from London at the onset of WOII. The children found out about her secret practices and blackmailed her into giving them a magic gift. This gift was a traveling spell, to be used by turning a bewitched bed knob back on the bed in a specific way and speaking out loud the destination you would want it to take you. Eventually the witch and the kids used it to get to an island not to be found on any known maps; the isle of Naboombu. There, they would get the remaining words needed for the ultimate spell of the witch’s correspondent course in witchcraft, that of “Substitutiary Locomotion”.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 772.5 aus 1