Week 2 — Learning from Architecture
MPS Seminar 1, Fall 2018, CMU
Readings:

“Stay on the right two lanes to merge on to I-95”, the Google Voice Assistant directed.
On our road trip to New York over the weekend, my friend and I were traveling through inter-connected highways running for hundreds of miles, with no prior information of routes or travel times.
In physical space, we had to drive through vast stretches of roads, all planned and directed to different destinations in the eastern part of the States. We were directed by the Google Maps app, that helped us stay on the right path and helped us reach our destination on time. Designed meticulously by teams of interaction designers across the world, it makes the activity of travel assisted, confident and efficient.
Reading excerpts from the book Learning from Las Vegas, triggered a few questions that relate to our understanding of spaces. Though we traditionally define space in the physical world as an architectural concept, the ‘digital space’ can be viewed as one of the mediums for interaction designers.
How was a physical space, such as a highway, manifested in a digital interface? In the digital space of Google Maps, what was the perception of the real world?
In their book, Venturi, Brown and Izenour discuss the city (and partially the highway) as a phenomenon of architectural communication. Space and its consideration with interactions become a critical part of architecture, especially in large-scale planning of cities (further, connected cities and highways).
An excerpt from Learning from Las Vegas:
A driver 30 years ago could maintain a sense of orientation in space. One knew where one was. But the driver has no time to ponder paradoxical subtleties within a dangerous, sinuous maze. He or she relies on signs for guidance-enormous signs in vast spaces at high speeds.
The authors refer to the importance of guidance and signs in navigation, a common aspect in road signage and transportation systems. Through our understanding of the concepts of lanes, exits, freeways, tolls, etc. we are able to choose specific routes and plan our travel.
Wayfinding interfaces such as Google Maps and Apple Maps have transformed our behaviours in daily commute and long-distance travel.
Our perception of a place, and its contained spaces, is now influenced by its corresponding virtual entity in the Maps interface. Directions use real-world representations of streets, avenues, highways and places. In the digital space, it reflects a Location in the City (or Highway) as an entity, that can be visited by following instructions in the real world.
But complex programs and settings require complex combinations of media beyond the purer architectural triad of structure, form, and light at the service of space. They suggest an architecture of bold communication rather than one of subtle expression.
What is the perception of a real location on a virtual map?
Apart from identifying coordinates on a map, we can observe a real place through a virtual lens, such as a 360 Video or Street View. Further, photographs and satellite images set up a visual context of a place even before we visit it.

On a conceptual level, the Maps interface is a fairly accurate geographical representation of a city, overlapped with multiple layers of information, that begin from individual places, distance between two such places, the modes of transport and the corresponding travel time, apart from depicting current location.
In relation with architecture and spaces, Maps have been designed to be reactive and intelligent. The system learns and presents estimation of traffic and travel times (through crowd-sourcing data across different devices). This is possible through a system of inter-connected devices constantly assisting each other (albeit very indirectly) for an informed, more accurate experience.

Meaning was to be communicated, not through allusion to previously known forms, but through the inherent, physiognomic characteristics of form. The creation of architectural form was to be a logical process, free from images of past experience, determined solely by program and structure.
Analysing the highway, and the digital representation of such a space, we observe that the translation from a physical road to an illustrated path, is quite abstract. Roads can be depicted as simple, bounded lines, to convey the meaning of direction and the path to follow, while adding layers through colors (to denote traffic), highway symbols, names of streets and the distance before a change of path. Such images do not necessarily interpret the physical space of the road as is — in fact, it simplifies the task of navigation by focusing on the larger, and more important elements such as directions and signage.
