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VORTICES

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Harvard Graduate School of Design

Mapping : Geographic Representation & Speculation

Team      | Carla Saad & Solomon Green-Eames

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‘Vortices’ explores the focal points at which the density of activities and daily rhythms unite. As if drawn by an un-seeable magnetic force, the daily routines of multiple individuals end up coalescing in proximity to each other in geographically bounded locations. These vortices of activity shift and morph over the course of the day, oscillating as each individual’s routine is played out. This sheds light on the power of certain ‘places’ to effect multiple independent individual's movements and actions on a spatial level.
 

Together the box is an assemblage of frames that convey how the overlapping trajectories of individual’s days form ‘vortices of activity’. Unpacking the box reveals individual frames; a collection of ‘paintings’ that depict the major activity shaping each vortex’s layer. Within our exploration, we identified four locations: Harvard Square, Central Square, Back Bay, and Downtown Boston as major attraction points producing a magnetic field of attraction.
 

Each panel represents one hour of the day, with areas exhibiting the highest density of activity being hewn in translucent material. The larger the area, the greater the density of activities taking place at that time in that location. Patterns etched onto the material show the most common activity in that location for that hour to show how certain geographic locations attract the movement of persons.

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Bordering Europe

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© 2025 by Carla Saad

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