Atlas of MAP office’s territories: landmarks, islands and other liquid landscapes

Reflection on territory (globalization, urbanization, migration etc.) is the starting point of this PhD dissertation. Moving through almost twenty years of multifaceted navigations, the research-based practice of MAP Office has evolved across multiple fields and disciplines. Along the way, the shift from medium and audience has created opportunities to explore new territories in order to move away from the conventional fields of architecture or urban design. In the last six years, a specific focus on islands and other liquid territories has been developed as a subject/object of studies.

Through these investigations, the practice is now exploring the new geography of a transient, globalized environment. A series of maps and cartographies of selected past and recent projects have produced an atlas in which the role of the designer/architect/artist is challenged to explore new territories, and a more narrative and fictional form of knowledge production. As an example, the latest project - Hong Kong Is Land (2014), recently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, introduces a taxonomy of spatialization that explores a new definition of territory expanding from the realms of architecture and urbanism.