Hayley Wyeth

Hayley Wyeth

I’d say my map is fairly accurate, though not at all to scale. The areas of Harvard Square that I know well are quite detailed; I found while doing the assignment that I know almost every building in the four square blocks between the yard and the river. However, I also realized how poorly I know the area between the yard and the Quad (I live in Kirkland and avoid the Quad at all costs) and the athletic complex (I also avoid exercise at all costs). The buildings in the yard are scaled to miniature size, because I couldn’t figure out, even after three tries, how to scale the whole map to fit in the quad and athletic complex while keeping the yard large enough to draw in each of its 20 or so buildings. I found that I knew the Old Yard (surrounded by dorms) far better than I knew the New Yard (surrounded by class buildings), because I mainly take classes in the science center, so I’m not totally sure how Sever and its neighbors fit into the map. I was particularly impressed by my accuracy when sketching Church, Brattle, Mt. Auburn, and Eliot Streets, because they all merge at a pretty strange intersection. I’d attribute this fact to my horrendous attempts at driving in the square and having to circle that area several times before getting onto the correct one-way street. Overall, this assignment taught me that an individual’s experience and knowledge of a city is totally subjective; it’s obvious which parts of Harvard Square I’ve spent time in and which parts I haven’t. Additionally, I learned that I experience urban areas quite locally, in that I don’t really think about areas outside my field of vision — when drawing the map, I could only focus on one block at a time, mentally walking through the immediate area, then moving on, rather than thinking of the Square from a big picture sense. I’d guess that this is probably why the scaling is so off. This was a really fun exercise, though, and I’m looking forward to the next sketch.