102 Gallery presents:  An Art Exhibition by the USF School of Architecture and Community Design and the Spring 2011 Urban Design Studio.  

Reading Landscapes, Telling Stories: mapping the culture of place 

Mapping is a critical part of the urban designer’s repertoire to gather information on place. But to understand a place, the urban designer must go beyond and beneath the represented objective 
reality: the urban designer must feel the pulse of the place. This exhibit seeks to extend the domain and methodology of interpreting and understanding the culture of place through mapping. We 
created maps as tools for representation and analysis to depict the inherent phenomenological character of place. The maps are of Ybor City, a historic center-city neighborhood in Tampa, FL. 
These maps or readings create a new syntax for capturing and representing the character, ambience and meaning of a place. Not only do these maps represent the structure of the place; they also 
evoke its histories and its cultures. The maps are like layers that can be peeled off to reveal the life of the neighborhood. They represent the tapestries of materials, nature, events, artifacts, movements, 
interactions, temporal patterns, and tensions in the neighborhood’s public, parochial and private space: the maps represent the true rhythm of life in the neighborhood.