legends · 3 min read ·
Notes from the Cartography Course
An evening cartography course teaches that a map is what it leaves out, and a student draws a fifth wall.
**Week 1 — Introduction to Cartography (evening class, Thursdays, Room 4, Lowfield Adult Education Centre)**
*Lecturer: Mr. Aurelio Vane. Notes taken by Nora H.*
Vane began by saying that a map is not a picture of a place. A map is a decision about what to leave out. He drew a coastline on the whiteboard in one stroke and asked us what was missing. We said the sea, the roads, the names. He said: "You've named what you can see. Think about what a map is not allowed to say."
I wrote that down. I underlined *not allowed*.
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**Week 2 — Scale and Projection**
Vane brought a rolled map of the town as it was in 1890. He pinned it to the wall beside the window. He asked us to find Lowfield Centre on it. We could not. The site is a blank square on the 1890 sheet, with no building and no field boundary, as if the surveyor had been unwilling to enter it.
"Look at the blank squares," Vane said. "Every map has them."
*Marginal note (Nora H., later): count the blank squares in the 1890 sheet. I got nine. One of them, at the north side, is the right shape for my street.*
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**Week 3 — Reading Maps**
He asked us to draw the room we were sitting in, as a plan, from memory. We had ten minutes. Eleven of us drew four walls, a door, windows, desks. Vane collected the drawings and turned them over one by one.
He held up mine. "Miss H. has drawn a fifth wall."
I had. I had not meant to. On my plan there was a narrow space between the radiator and the cupboard, with a door in it, drawn in pencil, ajar. I told him I must have made a mistake. He said: "There are no mistakes in cartography. There are only places that have not yet been entered."
He gave the drawing back. I put it in my bag without looking at it again.
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**Week 5 — Surveying**
Home exercise: survey your own living space and bring a plan to scale. I measured the flat with a tape. Living room 4.2 × 3.8. Kitchen 2.9 × 2.4. Bedroom 3.6 × 3.1. Bathroom 2.0 × 1.7. Hall 3.4 × 1.0.
When I added up the areas and compared with the plan of the building on the council website, there was a discrepancy of 5.5 square metres. The council plan has a rectangle between my kitchen and my bedroom, labelled *void*. It is the right size for a small room.
*Marginal note (Nora H.): I knocked on the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom. It sounded hollow. I didn't knock again.*
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**Week 6 — Class discussion**
Vane asked each of us to describe a map we had made ourselves, as children. Everyone said treasure maps, or the way to a friend's house. He said that every child draws the same thing: a path from where they are to somewhere they would like to go.
"No one," he said, "draws a path from where they are to where they already are."
I asked him what that map would look like. He said: "It would look like a floor plan. A very accurate one."
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**Week 8 — Final assignment (my notes, written at home)**
Vane returned our drawings from week 3. He had written a comment on each. Mine said only: *Scale 1:50. Orientation correct. The fifth wall is yours.*
I unrolled the drawing on the kitchen table. I had drawn the room we sat in at the course, with the fifth wall. But at the bottom of the sheet, in a different pencil, there was a second plan, small, in the corner, a plan of my flat, not drawn by me. It was accurate. It was in the lecturer's handwriting. It showed the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, the hall.
And between the kitchen and the bedroom, a room with a door, drawn in solid line, with a small label in the lecturer's capitals.
*YOURS.*