An urgent reflection on the shape we give – or is given – to the information that guides our choices. Fondazione Prada houses a new exhibition by Rem Koolhaas, Giulio Margheri, and Sietske Fransen, and comprises over 300 items (documents, video, imagery, digital media) from the twelfth century to the present day. Divided by theme – cities, war, health, inequality, truth… – these items show how diagrams are a kind of visual representation that can synthesize complex phenomena, model reality, and, in some cases, steer collective thought in a given direction. The exhibition opens with a diagram on itself, for the sake of transparency of its methods of research and exposition. Every ‘modern urgency’ is investigated inside rooms dedicated to individual case studies or authors. The relationship between past and present is alive and enriched by contributions that range from graphical modernism to sustainable urbanism platforms like Atmos Lab and Transsolar.
A special section is dedicated to war, with Minard’s famous diagram of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, a masterpiece of visual synthesis.

Featured image: Elwin J. Woodward, Diagramma storico e profetico del mondo:
il disegno salvifico di Dio per i trasgressori della legge, 1912 (particolare)
Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford University Libraries