Towards a Forensic Atlas for Threshold Territories
Countermapping the U-1277 Wreck
Leonor Carvalho
This research proposes alternative representations of the U-1277 submarine wreck, scuttled by its own crew off Leixões in 1945, through graphic and editorial design. Drawing on sonar imagery, bathymetry and visual records, it constructs a speculative cartographic system that opens other ways of seeing and knowing the subaquatic territory, through post-representational cartography and forensic countermapping, in three iterative cycles of definition, assessment, design and revision.
The outcome is an atlas of loose plates printed in gold on black paper, whose structure builds an argument about what it means to map a shipwreck and how design produces knowledge about territories that conventional cartography cannot reach. The framework offers a transferable model for other threshold territories.
Imprint / Technical Rider:
Year: 2026
Dimensions: 10 loose plates, 320 × 420 mm each
Materials: Ten loose plates, gold toner on black card stock.
Production and finishing: Charts built from side-scan sonar surveys (OceanScan-MST, 2024), bathymetry, Submania dive logs and historical photographs.
Resources and credits: Digital drawing in Procreate, layout in Adobe Illustrator 2026 and spatial processing in QGIS. Original drawings and texts by the author.
Curricular Unit:
Dissertation/Project/Internship (2nd year) — Project
Supervisor: Emília Dias Costa
Keywords: Forensic Countermapping, Speculative Cartography, Underwater Cultural Heritage, Sonar Imagery
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