ABSTRACT
The Panamanian Isthmus serves as an essential member in the global infrastructure of a consumerist society that relies on the safe and efficient delivery of goods and materials as an extension of the New Silk Road. The functioning of the Panama Canal which affords this movement is dependent on highly complex systems of measure that attempt to seize vertical and lateral control over the slippery surface of two distinct oceans that are in constant flux. These systems of measure are not new, nor are they innocent or of a purely rational logic. The Panamanian Isthmus has been subject to a history of colonial survey mapping since the 16th century that subjects the richness of experience and diversity of space into the logic of the grid, which this project intends to subvert by revealing it as a mythological product of modern thought.
Embracing the mythos (or folly) of a precise measure, the emergent project is the result of a constant negotiation and deliberate and methodological interaction with imprecision and analogue media to produce minor error. These errors serve as the starting point for 97 architectural structures that are positioned along intersections of the cartesian grids of 10 historical maps of Panama’s Pacific coast. These follies in turn take site-specific measure of their locations to problematise the global system of measure that passing container ships rely upon, as well as the colonial logic of the map and its consequences for architectural thought.