As an exercise in diagramming a city, the program called for a model of the City of Milwaukee broken down into its most important elements. I chose to represent the topography, highway, rail and street grid systems. The highway is most prominent because it defies all other systems and cuts through the grid and over the railroad.
Students were divided into groups and assigned different sections of the City of Milwaukee to diagram and construct in 1:100 scale. In our part of the city, the bluff was the most defining feature; the single thing that guided the layout of the grid of the roads and the city itself. We represented the topography with layers of acrylic illuminated from behind. Parks and open spaces were lightly sanded, with roadways left clear and main transportation routes shown with wire. Historical buildings were represented by blocks of plaster, half above the surface and half below. Objects below the surface show changes throughout time, with railroad below where the modern bike path is. The urban fabric is shown with wood and mesh indicating the land usage; commercial, residential or industrial.
