Yet the fabric of non-Western mega-cities - such as Jakarta, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Bangkok - cities where the bulk of the world's population resides - is constituted inescapably in those terms. What can architecture say about those kinds of urban agglomerations? Do its ways of seeing, its representational strategies, its epistemologies, its imaginaries have any relevance there? This research examines particular points of contact between architecture and spaces thought to be at civilization's margins. It is interested in testing Western architecture's most basic and reliable working assumptions in the quasi-urban conditions developing there.

The current focus of this research is the city of Jakarta, estimated population 23 million. The project deals with issues of representation in architecture - from traditional drawing and visual stategies to cognitive mapping - and is activated theoretically by Jean-Francois Lyotard's work on representation.

Stephen Cairns