Book Review: Shannon Mattern's "Deep Mapping the Media City"

2015-06-13T10:56:00-04:00

Amid the seemingly endless barrage of new writings about the imminent arrival of the technologically mediated “smart city,” a slim volume published by the University of Minnesota Press suggests that so-called intelligent urbanism might not be so new after all. In Deep Mapping the Media City, author Shannon Mattern, an associate professor at the School of Media Studies at the New School, argues cities have been “mediated, and intelligent, for millenia.” Rather than arbitrary ruptures, our cities have developed over time, as new infrastructural developments build off – or plug into – the infrastructure of the past.

Mattern takes a broad look at contemporary urban discourses, and compellingly advocates for an “urban media archaeology,” a “materialist, multisensory approach to exploring the deep material history” of our cities. She makes clear that her invocation of archaeology shouldn’t be read as part of the proliferation of the Foucauldian genealogical methodology en vogue in academia...

Rediscovering the deep section

2012-06-18T22:30:00-04:00

Whereas other forms of architectural representation may better communicate the formal or aesthetic concerns of a project—whether a project is “naturalistic, rectilinear, curvilinear, formal, or informal”—sectional drawings cut right past the plan aesthetic. Able to be drawn quickly and early in the design process, sections offer a powerful generative, communicative and analytical tool.

For the Winter 2011 edition of landscape urbanism Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner explore the performative ground and representational meaning of the deep section. They define three types of deep section—the landscape transect, the structural section and the sequential section - and their role in shaping a deep urbanism.

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Book Review: Shannon Mattern's "Deep Mapping the Media City"

Rediscovering the deep section