Chromatic Cartography: [Re] Drawing Architecture in a Digital Paradigm

This paper addresses the theoretical, procedural and formal implications of using image-based software as a new type of architectural drawing. Named chromatic cartography, this new category of digital production extends disciplinary knowledge of the drawing by redefining the representational and procedural repertoire of digital design practice. The representational and procedural differences of chromatic cartography rely on the ability of image-based software to capture and reconfigure real-world data. The pixel becomes central to this mode of mapping because it requires the map to represent form through color. In fact, the conversion of form into packets of visual data transforms the image's role in architectural practice, rupturing the longstanding practice of defining form through the line. The computational manipulability of visual data has significant procedural consequences for architectural production. It is not just that the image as visual data recasts the role images play in architectural production without violating digital discourse's core philosophical tenet of superseding semiotic meaning with meaningful production. Rather, computation circumvents past techniques of appropriation and reproduction that had transformed drawing into images of formal likeness and resemblance.