| Abstract: | Being rich in form and obscure in content, mapping brings not only new opportunities, but also confusion and doubts to the research and practice of contemporary complex landscapes. Therefore, deep exploration of mapping’s function, logic, and mechanism in inspiring design is needed to help recognize the value of Mapping and promote its understanding and application. Through literature review, case studies, and the authors’ practice and teaching, this article attempts to answer three questions: Which function does Mapping emphasize, representation or exploration? What is the logic of mapping in arranging information? And what is the mechanism of mapping in inspiring design? The main conclusions of this article include: 1) Rather than viewer-oriented representation, mapping more often serves the cartographers themselves in their exploration activities, in which they develop new understandings and create new possibilities while constructing the complex relationship of existing information; 2) Despite the various forms, media, and methods, mapping’s logical structures in organizing information would converge into five types: sequence, matrix, parallel, network, and deconstruction reflecting to various degrees the logic of complex landscapes themselves; And 3) through collecting and connecting information and ideas with certain logical frameworks, mapping helps with bottom-up generation of cognition and design of the site, which provides a visual operation carrier that reflects the site’s structures and evolutionary processes. Applying mapping in teaching and practice can promote designers’ cognition on structures and processes of complex landscapes and get rid of the dogma of following standardized workflows or imposed cultural symbols. |
