Spatial Information Design Lab

Director: Laura Kurgan

The GSAPP Spatial Information Design Lab is a think- and action-tank for the visual display of spatial information. Its founding and ongoing project has been a university wide one, to develop a meta-data standard for the growing archive of GIS data, and a suitable interface for this kind of spatial data. The lab will take a productive and yet critical approach to the field of GIS, and work with spatial data to design innovative ways in which the resulting images, or maps, might communicate what they picture with clarity, integrity, responsibility, creativity and invention. Survey and census data can be combined with Global Positioning System information, maps, high- and low-resolution satellite imagery, analytic graphics, photographic and other images, and even qualitative interpretations to produce effective information design. The word design is here for a reason: data sets are designed, even before they are visualized. There is no such thing as raw data, and all data is collected, processed and presented, with or without pictures. This lab takes as given that no data and no map is neutral, and we will exploit "non-neutrality" as a positive and productive aspect of data. What can we do with data? How can we visualize what it does? How can we put these important and growing resources to use responsibly, experimentally and effectively? The goal of the Spatial Information Design Lab is to make partnerships with people and organizations whose research requires the independence and rigor of an academic setting (free of the usual politics and pressures of real life situations), and who thrive in an atmosphere of open inquiry, experimentation, and risk-taking, in order to expand the ways in which data is collected, used, and presented.


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