Martino Tattara: Large-scale Plan

In connection with the conference and exhibition Drawing Millions of Plans, KADK presents a keynote lecture by Martino Tattara, co-founder of Dogma and Assistant professor of architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium. 

Within architectural research, drawing large-scale, diagrammatic, interpretative, or conceptual plans have become common practice. Yet, some of these plans cannot be confined within the framework of representation. While representing a certain condition, by drawing a plan an architect is forced to select, reduce, and interpret available data, engaging therefore in nothing less than a projective process.

Although the making of plans has often been criticized for being a neutral and unending process of production of drawings, some large-scale plans go beyond the field of representation and contain an implicit projective dimension, overcoming thus the threshold between mapping and design and revealing themselves as powerful design tools for the project of the city.

This lecture will discuss the history and meaning of the large-scale architectural plan through a series of canonical examples and by relating them to some of recent Dogma’s large-scale plans.

About Martino Tattara
Martino Tattara is a practicing architect and co-founder of the office Dogma. He is Assistant professor of Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven (Belgium). 

Between 2012 and 2015 he was the Head of Research and Teaching at ETH/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute (Switzerland). Previously, he has taught for several years at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). 

His theoretical work focuses on the relationship between architecture and large-scale urban design and he has widely published and lectured on topics related to the project of the city. Since a few years, he investigates through projects and writings the condition of domestic space.