Mapping our inner space into the outer world

Tjebbe van Tijen

article for the Japanese architecture magazine "10+1" Octobre 1995: click title page at the right to go to English version 

Maps are representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes or events in the human world. The representation techniques used can vary from graphic arts and spatial models to poetry, songs and dance. Maps not just reproduce geophysical realities, but can also transmit the shape of sacred space and the realms of fantasy and myth as explored by the inward eye.
 
 

* My free interpretation of a definition in the standard work by J.B. Harley and David Woodward "The history of cartography, Volume I, University of Chicago Press, 1987.