Digital tools and Multiplicity

This publication discusses how the use of simulation of landscape processes, techniques of cartographic representation and digital interfaces can help us move towards a relational form of understanding design at territorial scale. It does so by focusing on how synthetic thinking influences both our perception and definition of time but also how it addresses novelty within the construction of tacit responses to territorial dynamics (Llabres and Rico 2014). Three projects will be introduced where digital tools act as mediator between the designer and the different actors involved in territorial process; this form of openness and multiplicity unveils political tensions behind the design process. In that sense, synthetic time as design material has implications in the political dimension of the territorial project, bringing questions about the nature of the project itself and its form of documentation. The article argues that is the need of understanding the political nature behind human agency and its relations to material process what can bring further relevance to work with these techniques.