New article in The Architect, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.
The essay considers contemporary visual regimes of mapping and modelling and asks as the practice of architecture embraces these technologies, what critical questions emerge around the political potential of such methods? Rather than focusing the discussion on how technological advances might transform architectural practice for architects, debates that usually revolve around anxieties related to the deskilling of architects or the loss of a design sensibility, the essay discussed how digital technologies are affecting spatial analyses and what exclusions this might produce for those who inhabit such spaces, and how we can use forms of mapmaking to reveal the workings of power and forms of life that resist. These questions were considered in relation to the project, Topological Atlas, which responds to the challenges of visualisation in the context of migration and border areas.