Reading mutations

A diagram to look at the city through the lens of time

Abstract

Can time be an element in reading the city? How can its processes be represented in a single drawing? Moreover, how can we transform an analysis method to discover fixed elements in one that reveals the mutations of the city?

Reading the city and architecture through the lens of time leads to some considerations about the representation method. The map has helped visualise the shape of things since antiquity. At the same time, the diagram has crept into architecture as a topological and conceptual representation. To read the city through time means to stop the constant discovery of fixed elements that validate or not the functioning of a system, but rather to embrace the mutation and the relativity of time. Through the diagram, it is possible to move from a primarily diachronic representation of time to one that is both diachronic and synchronic, inventing a new specific reality and a new temporality.