Demarcation can be both conceptual and spatial.

Conceptually, demarcation seems to be the first step of our action; it often happens unconsciously. We are trained to classify the world in a particular way, to give names to whichever object we see. We operate within our disciplines. From the division of knowledge, we receive both the gospel of specialization and the curse of isolation. Spatially, the earth is only legible to human through demarcation. We divide it into grids and sovereigns and zones and agricultural fields and oceans and lands and suburbs and cities and buildings. Demarcation is a double-edged sword, essential to us, but obscures our views at the same time.

In the architecture field, demarcation is embedded in the process of design and is embodied through representation and construction. On the one hand, Demarcation endows the world with certainty, on the other hand, it constructs a world occupied solely by categorization that relinquishes things that are illegible.

Through the eyes of scholars across the campus, our issue explores how the world is understood or obscured through demarcation and how nature, architecture, communication and media connect to or depart from each other.