Location: Isla de la Cartuja, Seville, Spain
Architect: ARX Portugal, José Mateus / Nuno Mateus
Model Scale: 1: 50
Competition 1990
Owner Commissioner of Portugal for the Universal Exhibition of Seville
Area: 900 m2
May 1990 – Not Awarded
The astrolabe, the sextant, and some knowledge of Astronomy, helped sailors from the 16th century to cross, “blind”, seas of unknown dimensions, discovering places that had been “non-existent” until then.
The Polar Star indicated the North and made it possible, using these instruments, to measure the Altitude and from there derive the Latitude. You knew approximately where you were.
With the discovery of the Earth’s magnetic field, magnetic needles began to be used in guidance systems, which corrected errors in astrolabes’ readings.
However, Magnetic North did not always coincide with Royal North. There was an irregular difference: the deviation. This compass error was the uncertainty that was to be mathematically rationalized and later incorporated into Knowledge. The charts started to be (re)drawn every ten years, as the “magnetic meshes” slid over the “geodesics”.
Places shifted among themselves (and from each other) in time.
Error became a necessary notion in guidance systems at sea, in order to guarantee the (relative) permanence of the place. Text by the author
