MAS 963 Soaces I

Assignment

Your assignment is in two parts:

1. Please read all the following and write a critique of three out of the five papers (either Lynch or Milgram, plus 2 out of the remaining 3):

• Milgram, S. Psychological maps of Paris (available near IC)
• Lynch, K. The Image of the City, Chapter 1 (available near IC)
• Donath, J. Chapter on Sociable information spaces
• Staple, G. Notes on Mapping the Net: From Tribal Space to Corporate Space
• Girardin, L. Mapping the virtual geography of the World Wide Web

There are also a number of interesting visualizations accessible from The Atlas of Cyberspace that you should look at.

2. Sketch the Media Lab website as an inhabited social space. Your sketch should be more conceptual than easily implementable: the goal is to think about what a virtual space can look like. You should consider the different types of spaces that this site includes (personal pages, research links, etc.) and how you would represent them. In particular, think about what makes this environment "legible" - what are the landmarks? what structure is reveal through the visible representation?

This assignment is due online by Tuesday at 5pm.