James Corner (March 17, 1999)

After being introducted by Perry Kulper, James Corner discusses the influence of the Situationists on his mapping techniques. He investigates the deployment of fields as an organizational system, identifying the collective surfaces that lend structure to the parts they support. Corner explores “dispositions,” which he describes as elements that maintain a precise structure without dictating how events unfold. He discusses Parc de la Villette and the Yokohama Port Terminal in terms of fields and the expectation of uncertain futures. James Corner presents a series of projects informed by his research. A plan for the transformation of Philadelphia applied Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblage techniques to mapping. He describes a project responding to a splintered ground plane in Houston as an attempt to break from an existing axis in the plan. Corner presents work from his book Taking Measures Across the American Landscape involving aerial photography. He proposed to assemble an array of radio telescopes in New Mexico into a field operation.