From Abstraction to Mimesis. Reading Urban Forms Through Underground City Representation.

Urban morphology has traditionally relied on two-dimensional representational frameworks, relegating the underground to a technical domain rather than recognising it as a formative component of urban form. This paper addresses this gap by examining how representation contributes to the understanding of urban form within a three-dimensional conception of urban space. Building on Muminovic’s (2019) process of abstraction, the study adopts a qualitative comparative analysis of five representational regimes, interpreted as epistemic devices that actively construct knowledge by isolating specific morphological properties such as relations, networks, layers, and volumes. The analysis demonstrates that no single representational mode can fully capture urban thickness. Instead, a three-dimensional understanding of the city emerges from the coordinated use of multiple representational strategies, reframing the underground as a legible and designable dimension of urban morphology.