KKen-

I think James Corner describes the notion of mapping the best:

"As a creative practice, mapping precipitates its most productive effects through a finding that is also a founding: its agency lies in neither reproduction nor imposition but rather in uncovering realities previously unseen or unimagined, even across seemingly exhausted grounds. Thus mapping unfolds potential; it re-makes territory over and over again, each time with new and diverse consequences."

"...the function of mapping is less to mirror reality than to engender the re-shaping of the worlds in which people live."

The above can be found in James Corner's essay " The Agency of Mapping: Speculation Critique and Invention"

Also look at the essay, Maps in the book Parts and Places, The structures of Spatial Representation, by Casati and Varzi.

I would also look into Edward Tufte's "Envisioning Information":
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_ei

I have the above essays. Email me if you want them.

the problem you'll find (perhaps you seem to be hitting it already), is that mapping is a great tool for analysis and insight but it doesn't directly propose a method of production. how you make that leap is (hopefully) one of the essential lessons to learn from the project.

To Ovalle, it's a beautiful way to put the mapping - regarding the James Corner's essay and it helps me to understand a bit :) however, the phrase that the function of mapping is less to mirror reality than to engender the reshaping of the worlds in which people live, does it mean it got to be abstract?

Dear el Jeffe, yeah, I come across that problem. For instance, I was doing a retreat project and my mapping was based on the way wind blows against an object, for example, leaves and so the idea was based on wind making things move and blurry. so the image of moving and blurring got associated with the site, and then one will picture the site when you feel the wind against your face but I come across the block to translate them into my building design or construction.

To Treekiller, that thread is really handy :) Thanks!

Mapping shouldn't be abstract (what's the point if it is?), it should always be based on realities. However, what these realities are, the combination of them and how they are represented may lend themselves to an abstract understanding, taken away from the 'facts' themselves. The thread that treekiller linked to is perfect - a lot of the things being mapped are very simple things or things that one wouldn't even think to map, but by visualising them (and often creating a process in order to do so) you can discover relationships and significant points of interest that you otherwise wouldn't. I find it best to think of mapping (in this sense) as the process of presenting information rather than the creation of a map.

In regards to producing something from your mapping, that is the difficult step. Very rarely will the results of mapping be significant enough to become the basis of a design (although god knows many students will try to do so), but it can often be productive in helping to make decisions and spark ideas. Something that seems to be cropping up a lot is using very simple site mapping to deform a box, illustrated by a succession of diagrams showing the box being influenced one step at a time by wind, views, public access etc... Often though mapping is more a process of discovery than production, use it to make smart, informed decisions.

I see, I always thought that the mapping is the starting point in the house design and that the house design must be always be orientated towards it, but of course it could be done that way as well, I believe. To sum up, I think mapping is the understanding of the architect towards a certain site which will influence the design and could used to form a basis for the design although the mapping idea and the building construction are not necessarily the same.

For me personally, "mapping provides the opportunity to extract and reassemble conventional concepts into spatial ones by shifting the perception of the viewer. It is a translation tool of the everyday language of the city into the complex and sometimes cryptic vocabulary of architecture. It appeals to the pragmatics of language in order to construct a new vocabulary.
The specialized nature of the map makes its reading uniquely appropriate to the mapped content rather than the original. That is to say the map generates its own universe accessible to the reader through the map’s particular language. It is selective
in its rendering of information and offers a meticulously constructed image out of the thousand images held within the object. Each map can unveil a different characteristic and each map can unveil a parallel universe extracted from the same reality.
The map offers not only the precision of a reading but the possibility of interpretation and variation."