Learning from the Nolli Map: Representing the Landscape through Figure-Ground

Abstract

Cartographic practices associated with planning and designing cities, landscapes, and buildings rely on maps for representing three-dimensional environments in two-dimensional depictions. The simplest depiction is figure-ground, a method that allows a clear and powerful reading of a space through a binary mapping of built space (object) and empty ground (field). The most influential example of figure-ground is Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 Pianta Grande di Roma; Nolli’s figure-ground technique was adopted in the 1960s by faculty at the Cornell University Urban Design program as a primary tool for formulating their urban design theories. The most common use of figure-ground focuses on a binary organization that creates false hierarchies and denotes figure and ground as exclusionary poles, privileging the figure and legitimating its position. Elizabeth Meyer argues “for a definition of landscape architecture as a hybrid activity that is not easily described using binary pairs as opposing conditions” (Meyer 1997, 50); this way of thinking limits our ability to see, listen, and create. Figure-ground renders the landscape amorphous or totally dependent on the building for its shape and structure. This article reviews the origin of figure-ground and focuses on two perceptual principles used in Pianta Grande di Roma (proximity and contour) that could arguably shift figure and ground from biased and exclusionist poles, into mutualistic and contingent entities. This alternative perception of figure-ground may allow a better integration of the ground within the figure and offers the potential to map in-between conditions, temporalities, and changes in the landscape.