Cartographic Interfaces for Hybrid Spaces: Communication Design in the Spatial turn.

Marco Quaggiotto Research Fellow Politecnico di Milano Italy marco.quaggiotto@polimi.it Giovanni Baule Full Professor Politecnico di Milano Italy giovanni.baule@polimi.it The paradigm brought by the Spatial turn and its merging of material and immaterial spaces in a new hybrid space, together with the widespread use of geolocalisation, establishes a deep connection between everyday actions and their immediate and constant geo-spatial positioning. In this context, Communication Design is required to provide access to a hybrid territory that mixes physical locations with the immaterial qualities of context and information. Maps, as interfaces to the spatial dimension, provide tools to represent, narrate, access and act on the complexity of the territory. As narratives, maps are able to address the complexity of space providing shared abstractions and virtual spaces of interpretation. As tools, maps build synthetic spaces for action, which allow manipulating virtual territories that merge real and abstract qualities for specific purposes. As containers, maps reveal accumulations of hidden resources, making implicit contents readable. In a scenario in which digital tools drive design actions toward the design of representation processes, the need is that to supply methods and tools capable of managing narrative and instrumental components of cultural artefacts. Digital cartography, from a Design perspective, is not only about portraying the complexity of space, but also about designing interfaces to provide access to hybrid spaces.