Time, Space, and Human Experience Along the Sunset Dunes and the Former Great Highway in San Francisco

Chronomaps are agents that reveal connections and adjacencies not readily apparent to human perception. Unlike human observation or landscape depictions in 2D representations, they allow for an experience of landscape that honors the adjacency of places and timescales. In chronomaps, nothing is a disparate entity. Rather, each feature interpenetrates and flows into others. This births new awareness of relationships between landscapes and new ways of imagining them, rewriting the boundaries between observer and observed.

This presentation examines transitional landscapes as dynamic systems that shape fundamental relationships between human activities and natural processes, relationships that planners and policymakers often overlook. Through the case studies of the Sunset Dunes and the former Great Highway corridor along San Francisco's ocean edge, Chronomaps emerges as a vital agent of imaginality and relationality, redefining how time, space, and human experience intersect.

Chronomaps proposes that the capacity to hold dynamic images in the mind is the essential precursor to relational thought. Before meaningful connections between objects, events, or scales of existence can be contemplated, imagination must first be activated. Once mobilized, it renders relationships perceptible, visible in the mind's eye, and these newly perceived connections catalyze ever deeper layers of imaginative engagement.

Through the investigative instruments of cartography and videography, Chronomaps transforms static locations into living stages of interaction. Places are no longer inert coordinates but dynamic theaters where timescales, humanscales, and material environments converge. Mapping becomes not merely descriptive but generative — stirring the psyche and inviting viewers to perceive layered temporalities and relational networks embedded within space.

Ultimately, Chronomaps is not simply a method of observing space. It is a fundamental reorientation of perception — a shift in how we inhabit and understand the world. Through the transformative power of the image, space becomes relational, time becomes palpable, and human experience becomes situated within a continuously unfolding, moving map of connections.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Ben Gitai

Dr. Ben Gitai brings together geography, architecture, and interconnected fields through his multidisciplinary research and practice. He has held teaching positions at leading Swiss and French institutions, including ETH Zurich and EPFL, as well as scientific collaboration with the David Rumsey Mapping Center, Stanford University.

His work draws from landscape architecture, landscape ecology, urban planning, political geography, and history to examine how spatial configurations evolve across time and reflect underlying social, political, economic, and power dynamics. Through these lenses, he develops metabolic and ecological design approaches.

Central to his research is the recontextualization of mapping as a tool for portraying the intricate connections between human activities and natural systems. This approach reveals new perspectives on the forces that continuously shape and reshape our built and natural environments.

Dr. Gitai currently serves as head coordinator of the Habitat Research Center and works as both scientist and lecturer at the Laboratory of Landscape Development at EPFL, where he develops research on transitional landscapes.