Questioni di percezione. Elaborazioni grafiche per mappe sintetiche

The selection of the sign leads to the choice of a graphic order. Operating on subtraction, models are elaborated of linear perceptions of real space. The organization of signs that underlie a portion of the territory, for example, is a matter of formal and graphic choices. This paper takes into consideration some graphic elaborations referring to the synthetic representation of territories. The drafting of maps in which the graphic synthesis underlies an orderly and complex systematization of data in order to make visible and communicate the peculiarities of territories intended as the sum of physical and anthropic events present in geographical areas. Examining the works of Jorge Macchi, Joaquín Torres García, Alighiero Boetti and the OMA design, the process that led to the drawing up of the maps of the Ksours of Tataouine and the Draa Valley in Morocco is narrated. The graphic structure of the map, in addition to considering the physical aspects of the territory, expresses forms, relationships and the variation of space. Each sign becomes the synthesis of contexts in which physical and anthropic places are definited in perceptive narratives capable of reporting the state of the places. The analyses and processing of territorial data, not only physical or static, but changeable and flexible, pass through the synthesis of the graphic sign as a process of organizing the activities and functions of the territory. The materialization of the connections between heterogeneous and discontinuous places and continuous and homogeneous signs represents the intersection between the physical and geographical concreteness of the earth's surface and the abstract and axiomatic ideality of representation. Sometimes heterogeneous and discontinuous places affected by non-linear relationships and independent levels determine configurations visible only through graphic abstraction in which the signs organized into categories and neatly highlighted refer to autonomous levels of real space.