Matteo Ballarin 
Works: Territorial Representation 

An engineering approach to planning issues is the outcome of an engineerization of territorial representational tools. The ideology of Geographic Information Sistems (GIS) basically replaced representation disciplines in landscape education with a dependence on data governance, thus flattening the inherent complexity of planning practices and evading the economy of draftsmanship in didactic processes.Territory is a conceptual reference horizon rather than a series of materials; it assumes as many senses as the number of disciplines taking it as their case study. Territory is the sum of natural phenomena and anthropogenic processes that create a form, intended as the visual outcome of a non-accidental and deliberate process.The book examine different experiences in planning didactics which avoided the inertia of GIS tools: critical redrawing of significant exempla; landscape analysis through direct survey; visualization of alternative figurations in landscape design. These approaches strive for a qualitative territorial representation as the index of the quality of planning. Matteo Ballarin (Venice, 1976), teaches Representation disciplines at the Politecnico di Milano, Milan, IUAV University in Venice and the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna. He is author of Software gratuito per l’Architettura e l’Urbanistica, (Maggioli Editore, 2014)