Creative Cartography: Making Pedagogy Playful but Political —Priya Joseph

The basic tenet that academic learning could be playful, exploratory but should also be a space for political commentary on issues of relevance to the present world, is argued for, through an academic studio. This argument is elaborated by discussing the outcome of academic work in this article, elaborating on ponderings such as collaborative living with non-human species, use of traditional historical methods, new technology and combining them with methods of art and design that allow for a larger freedom for play.

This experimental work as part of the undergraduate design studio, Creative Cartographies¹ at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, wanted to tell the histories of cultural and biological diversity of a site, that at first only appeared as a dilapidated, ruinous building. In this case, mapping the first terracotta roofing tile factory of India, at Mangalore, Karnataka, established in 1864 was the context.

The Terracotta Tile Factory

The Jeppu Tile Factory, which made the first ‘Mangalore Tiles’ that adorned the roofs of most of South India in the 19^th and 20^th century, is unique in many ways. The Basel Mission, a German evangelical group formed in Basel, in 1815 started the factory. In the 19th century, it set up missions in European colonies across Asia and Africa. Operational in India’s Madras Presidency from 1831 onwards (Basel Mission Annual Report 1871), the mission owes its uniqueness to the fact that it was as much an industrial enterprise as a religious one. From 1831 to 1920, the mission was involved in several industrial and commercial activities in South Canara and the Malabar (Stenzl 2010, 13).

The history of this factory is intriguing and vast but to give a brief context, between 1834 and 1914, the mission expanded its industrial initiatives and entrusted George Plebst, a mechanic by training, was who perceived that the rich earth of the region and the existing terracotta craft tradition could be used to further expand the mission’s industrial ventures. The factory produced roofing tiles, ceiling tiles, balusters, drainage pipes, bricks, columns, flooring tiles, decorative ridge tiles, vases, and decorative pots. Each of these products was made with soil from the banks of the Netravati River, using local skill and labour, and adapted to the German designs that Plebst had brought with him (Joseph 2018).

The Mangalore roofing tile was without doubt the Basel Mission’s most popular and widely used machine-made product. The Jeppu factory being the first tile factory, is a historic site of heritage value but also a site of the Anthropocene. The studio not only focused on mapping with artistic media but also on making a commentary on this contested site of heritage value, important to the Industrial history of the region. Apart from it being on the banks of River Netravati, an ecologically sensitive site, using the soil, water and human resources of the region, is it a highly contested site of the modern-day political ecology.

The context of this tile factory built in 1864 become a potent site for discussions about layered co-existence in the studio. The cartography exercise wanted to investigate the Anthropocene², through exploration of digital and conventional tools, lateral thinking and different methods of representation of the findings. The output was not the cartesian drawing that traditional map making uses but explored methods of lateral representation that digital ways offer. This studio, a two-week quick and dirty understanding of questions and tools, pushed the conventional notions and boundaries of mapping. Transdisciplinary collaborations were at the core of the workshop, bringing Spatial design, Human Centred Design, Creative Education, Industrial Design and Architecture students together to work in teams.

Commentary Through Creative Outputs

Creative outputs became a critical method of commentary and mapping within the project, allowing ecological, historical, and spatial narratives to be understood through accessible and participatory media. One student group produced a film titled Sonic Cartography (link to the film), which translated the sounds of the abandoned tile factory into a visual experience. Using archival photographs from the 1860s, on-site documentation, and references from a functioning tile factory in Ganjimutt, Mangalore, the students mapped the sonic disturbances created by machinery along a riverbank ecosystem.

AI tools such as Pixverse and OpenArt animated the archival material into moving images, creating a speculative visual language through which sound, memory, and industrial history could be experienced together. The project questioned how technology, art, and archives can be combined to construct alternative and decolonised readings of history.

Another project, When Algae Wins, approached the site through a playful digital game made using Scratch software. The game mapped algae growth within the ruins, identifying areas sustained by moisture, air, and light. Here, algae became the protagonist, growing larger as it encountered environmental conditions that supported its spread. Through gamification, complex ideas around climate change, decay, and multispecies coexistence were made accessible to children and adults alike. The project revealed how abandoned architecture becomes an active ecological terrain shaped by non-human actors.

Other works explored similar relationships through different media. One film mapped the movement of natural light through the ruins, revealing how algae, ants, spiders, and other organisms occupy spaces shaped by heat, moisture, and illumination (link to the film). Another project took the form of a puzzle made with terracotta tiles and plaster reliefs, symbolising the gradual takeover of nature within the factory. By assembling the puzzle, participants physically engaged with the idea that ecological transformation is collaborative rather than passive. Across these works, art and design became tools for translating layered ecological and philosophical questions into interactive, experiential forms of knowledge.

Criticality of it All

The political commentary made by the studio was clear in its intention; to show civic authorities and decision makers that it is important to resist the land mafia in cities, who are waiting to make shiny hubs of capital movement in every site possible. By shifting the way, we read and understand architecture in this century affected by the Anthropocene, the narrative moves from instant capitalistic ambition to allowing for long term sustenance, letting ecology thrive, and humans co-exist with non-human species.

While cross-disciplinary work has focused on the new realities of the Anthropocene in the past, this particular example of the 19th century building allowed for architecture’s complex historical relationship to nature to be reconsidered in its political, economic, and cultural dimensions. The intention of the studio to move away from the limitations of Cartography, which may be narrow and may include only technical drawings to using the agency of mapping was critical. Mapping in a way that moves away from a passive recording tool to an active, creative, and “agentic” process, constructs new spatial realities.

This meant that the work was more representational but with a strong agency, that endorsed the use of various mediums like film, art and gamification, helping to highlight the environmental and political discourses starkly. The andragogical tools of art and student work led to questions and commentary beyond the intended, arguments and revelations in a classroom, a studio space that shifted something in each of us, who were a part of the studio.

References

• Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
• Hillenbrand, Margaret; Xuenan Cao. 2026. “Facial AI: Cosmetic Surgery in China and the Death of Internets Everywhere.” Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 103, Spring 2026, pp. 102-116 
• Joseph, Priya. 2018. “The Basel Mission and its Terracotta Products in Karnataka”. www.sahapedia.org. https://www.sahapedia.org/19th-century-basel-mission-products. Accessed: 10 May 2026
• Karnataka Theological College Archives. Basel Mission Annual Report 1871
• Stenzl, Catherine. 2010. “The Basel Mission Industries in India 1834-1884: Improvisation or Policy?” Master of Arts Dissertation, Birkbeck College, University of London.
• Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.

Footnotes

1. Creative Cartographies was a 10 day immersive design studio offered through the Spatial Design major at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The studio included contributions from students Lipsa Mishra, Vishnu Menon, Amey Prasanth, Kreiyashree Abhinay, and Aarushi Vasudevan, along with architecture students from Nitte Institute of Architecture, Mangalore. The unit emerged from the Spatial Design course at Srishti. Support and collaboration from Ramesh Kalkur, Ninad Koranne, Vishwesh Viswanathan, Dr Arindam Das, Vinod Arhana, Nikita Makhasana, and participating students and faculty were integral to the development of the studio and its experimental academic work. ↩︎
2. The Anthropocene is defined as representing the current time where human activity has become the dominant influence on earth’s climate and ecosystems and capitalistic understanding of the world is predominantly guiding action. ↩︎