Socioplastics 11997 The Landscape Section Reveals and Conceals
The architectural section is both a way of investigating space and a public argument about what matters within it. CutawayDepth examines the productive depth of a drawing alongside its capacity to edit relations from view. A dramatic cutaway can reveal underground infrastructure, topography and the relation of buildings to terrain. It may also leave out street life, ownership, maintenance labour and the conflicts that complicate the designer’s account. The drawing’s selectivity is part of its analytical force and should remain open to examination. James Corner’s work on landscape representation demonstrates the generative capacity of mapping and drawing. Ada Louise Huxtable’s architectural criticism insists on the public consequences of built form. Their practices approach representation from different positions. Together they support a comparison between the section as a projective instrument and the section as a public claim. Neither drawing nor criticism has privileged access to a complete situation. Each can make certain relations visible, organise attention and influence how a project is understood. A study could compare a project’s section drawings with site observations, maintenance records, ownership documents and accounts from people who use the landscape. Researchers would identify what the section foregrounds, how its scale shapes interpretation and which relevant processes remain outside its frame. A drawing that exposes drainage and soil conditions may generate an important ecological question while giving little account of who maintains the system. Additional layers can expand the analysis without assuming that one composite image will represent the whole site. CutawayDepth names a representational operation rather than a fixed graphic technique. It helps designers state what their sections show, what decisions those views support and what further evidence could qualify their claims. A section can be both inventive and selective; making that relation explicit improves its public use. The marker encourages architectural drawings to connect their projective capacities with the social and material conditions they reorganise, allowing depth to function as an invitation to inquiry as well as a claim about space.
REFERENCES
Corner, J. (1999) “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention”, in Cosgrove, D. (ed.), Mappings. London: Reaktion Books, pp. 213–252.
Huxtable, A.L. (1981) Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger: An Anthology of Architectural Delights and Disasters. Washington, DC: Preservation Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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