Thick mapping mobility: a design-driven research for the architecture of interchanges

This paper examines thick mapping as a design-driven research method applied in the educational setting of an international architectural design workshop. The workshop brings together 45 students at different levels and fields of education, academics, and practitioners in a collaborative exercise to co-create new knowledge about mobility at railway stations. Participants reinterpret stations as architectures of interchanges through three thematic lenses of investigation: articulation (flows), light & safety (perception), and interfaces (interaction with users). By combining mixed-media drawings with thick mapping practices, the workshop explores the visible and invisible relationships between mobility infrastructure, architectural space, and human perceptions in stations. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1- to demonstrate how thick mapping can reveal new spatial narratives, creative potentials, and constraints that define mobility architecture and its experience; 2- to illustrate how it provides a deeper understanding of stations by visualising interactions between multiple scales, systems, modalities, agents, and flows; 3- to show how it supports co-design across different disciplines. Thick mapping thus emerges as a critical collaborative method of production linking research, learning, and design in addressing the complexities of mobility architecture.