Reading the City From Below. Representation as a Tool for Unveiling Urban Morphology

The article investigates the role of underground space in understanding the city as a three-dimensional morphological structure, considering representation as a central epistemic device in the process of spatial knowledge production. The research is grounded in the abstraction model developed by Milica Muminović (2019), here reinterpreted by assigning representation the role of the final stage of analysis, through which abstract knowledge acquires spatial localisation and urban legibility. Within this framework, representation is not conceived as a merely descriptive outcome, but as an active instrument in the construction of morphological knowledge. Adopting a non-chronological approach, the study examines a selected corpus of maps, sections, diagrams, and three-dimensional representations to investigate how underground space has been rendered intelligible within urban form. The analysis is structured around three interrelated morphological dimensions: the connection between parts, understood as relational infrastructure; the stratigraphic composition, interpreted as a dynamic process of material and temporal accumulation; and the three dimensional relationship between parts, read as an integrated volumetric assemblage. The case studies demonstrate how urban depth has been conceptualised and organised through representational practices capable of describing urban morphology. Overall, the findings contribute to a reading of the city as a volumetric continuum, in which the underground emerges not as a residual or purely technical domain, but as a structuring component of the city’s form