The Cortland Map Project
Large-Scale Community-Built Mapping Project.
The Cortland Map - a large-scale, three-dimensional, community-built map of Cortland Avenue from Mission Street to Bayshore Avenue. This map is a project of Bernal Heights’ very own Green Arts Workshop.
This accurate scale map will be built of locally sourced cardboard, arranged on edge like slices of bread, forming an accurate representation of a one mile section of the south slope of Bernal Hill containing the entirety of Cortland Avenue. Once the form of the hillside is built, the cardboard will be skinned with colored paper to accurately represent the Avenue, as well as the side streets which branch from Cortland.
The map will ultimately be large, and built in multiple panels. The assembly of the individual panels will happen in the public realm alongside Cortland Avenue, over the course of several weeks. Venues for panel construction might include sidewalks, parklets, and interested businesses. The assembly will be simple, and the processes easy to learn. The tools involved will be limited to supervised cutting and careful gluing. GAW has a good track record of creating art events which are participatory, inclusive, and of high caliber.
The creation of the map will aim to serve the following purposes…
1. Raise the profile of, and funds for, Green Arts Workshop.
2. Engage the neighborhood in a discussion of the public spaces formed by and immediately adjacent to Cortland Avenue.
3. Have fun and possibly learn something (from the bottom up) about geography, geology, hydrology, sewage flow, urban design, street safety, traffic, commerce, community relations, and ourselves (this is an abbreviated list:)
If you’d like to be kept abreast of this project please drop me an email