maps and diagrams and bears-- oh my!

With Stan Allen’s assertion that a diagram isn’t necessarily “a thing in itself, but a description of potential relationships among elements… a map of possible worlds”, the thin line between map and diagram, which we attempted to navigate last semester and which never quite came into focus in my mind, is once again blurred. The manner in which Allen describes the diagram, as an abstract tool for organization and the discovery of new potential organizations, very much accords with my understanding of Corner’s definition of a map (as distinct from a “trace”). To further my confusion, enter Toyo Ito, who states that a diagram “describes how a multitude of functional conditions must be read in spatial terms, into an actual structure”.

As I struggle to understand the difference between a map and a diagram—if, in fact, one truly exists—I seize on Allen’s assertion that diagrams function through matter/matter relationships, as opposed to through matter/content relationships. He asserts that a matter/matter relationship turns “away from questions of meaning and interpretation, and reassert function as a legitimate problem, without the dogmas of functionalism”. Do maps, in fact, operate from matter/content relationships, as opposed to matter/matter relationships?

Indeed I believe that maps are concerned with matter/content relationships, as put forth by Corner. While maps, according to Corner do uncover” realities previously unseen or unimagined”, they gain their agency by doing so “across seemingly exhausted ground”. This seems to me a particularly matter/content relationship. However, despite this rather tenuous differentiation, I remain fundamentally confused about the difference between the two. For now, I am content to use whatever I am making—maps or diagrams—as generative tools and abstract machines, to inspire, but not resemble, what they produce.