In Mediated Reconstructions (LAN3016), an option studio taught by Aisling O'Carroll, students were asked to use the idea of "reconstruction" as a design tool for imagining new ways of engaging with one of the world's most dramatic landscapes: the Alps. Louisa chose to focus her work on the Gotthard Pass, a route across the mountains that has been vital point of connection between northern and southern Switzerland since the 13th century. The route traverses the Schöllenen Gorge, a deep cleft in the mountains through which the Reuss River flows.

"My great grandmother is from the valley in Switzerland where the site is located," Louisa says. "I'd visited it as a child. The studio seemed like a cool opportunity to look at it from a different perspective."

Louisa was interested in the way the Gotthard Pass has evolved over time. Originally, in the middle ages, it was a walking route, with a simple wooden footbridge spanning the gorge. A 16th-century stone bridge allowed carriage traffic to pass. A replacement stone bridge, built in the early 19th-century, was wide enough for motorized vehicle traffic. In the late 19th century, a new rail tunnel allowed train passengers to travel underneath the mountains. Louisa's research explored the historical development of transportation across the pass — from foot, to carriage, to car, and ultimately to tunnelled rail — and the shifts in experience and perception of landscape that accompanied these changes.

A rendering of four generations of Schöllenen Gorge bridges, superimposed. In reality, only the two most recent bridges remain. (Click here to view a larger version.)

In the 1950s, a new, modern two-lane bridge across the gorge was erected over the top of the 19th-century stone bridge. Now, the two bridges coexist. The newer one carries vehicle traffic and the older one, which is known locally as the Devil's Bridge (there's a story behind the name), is reserved for pedestrians.

Louisa observed that something had been lost as a result of tunnelling and increased travel speeds across the Gotthard Pass. "There have been two tunnels built underneath the mountain, a rail tunnel and a car tunnel," she says. "Most people now, when they're travelling through this area, they bypass the landscape altogether, because they're travelling underground at high speed. This has resulted in a phenomenon of time-space compression."

(Click here to view a larger version.)

In order to illustrate this time-space-compression effect, she created a detailed map of the Gotthard Pass and folded it. The folds represent the parts of the route that a person would be unable to see if they travelled the route at high speed.

In the image above, the "by foot" map is completely unfolded, because a pedestrian would be travelling slowly enough to see the entire mountain pass. The "by carriage" map is folded in a few places, to represent the parts of the landscape that a person would unable to take in if they were travelling at the speed of a horse. The "by car" map is tightly folded, to represent the limited views available to anyone traversing the pass at the speed of internal combustion. And the "by tunnel" map is almost completely folded in upon itself, because someone travelling the gorge by train would see virtually nothing but darkness.

Using the folding exercise as a reference, Louisa created a unified map showing the views available to all four types of travellers in a single visualization. The map explores the relations between representation and perception of landscape, in particular the way the conventions of cartography evolved together with modes of transportation and technology. The image below is made up of four different illustration styles: some parts are rendered as modern road maps (representing areas visible by train), some are rendered as early-20th-century road maps (representing areas visible by car), some are rendered as 19th-century maps (representing carriage speed), and some are rendered as medieval maps (representing walking speed).

(Click here to view a larger version.)

Finally, Louisa used the geographical information she had gathered as the basis for a design proposal. She invented a series of numbered trail markers that could be positioned throughout the Gotthard Pass. Each number would correspond to a brief historical note, which could be printed on maps and distributed to travellers, regardless of their chosen mode of travel.

Louisa designed different types of route markers for different modes of travel. (Click here to view a larger version.)

"The idea is to encourage people to travel aboveground," Louisa says. "It's a way for people to reengage with this landscape and this cultural heritage. A lot of them aren't even aware that these bridges exist."