Khalid Tawil

Khalid Tawil

My sketch was done as if I was a cartography making a map of the city. My focus was not on how individual buildings appeared but rather how locations related to each other spatially. After finishing my sketch, I took a look at an actual map to find a glaring error in my sketch staring at me: the size of Harvard Yard. I had completely underestimated the size of the yard, making it about a fourth of its actual size. Another error, although unexpected, was my map’s orientation. I had always thought of Harvard Yard’s square shape to be representative of the cardinal directions, but apparently the Yard’s top right corner points at an angle of 25o from North.

It looks I included all the buildings I know about correctly. On some lots with tall structures I actually drew 3d towers because they were so vital in my perception of the place. There is also the weird phenomenon of lots getting larger and larger the farther away from the Yard they got. This really highlights how I make the places I care about larger than they actually. Although the Yard is important, to me, to much more goes on in Harvard’s houses, which is why I imagined them to be bigger. Then again, when I think of campus, I picture the Yard as its center so I started with that and drew outwards, so its possible that everything else grew larger because I started out with a Yard that was too small.