ROMANIAN REVIEW OF REGIONAL STUDIES, Volume IX, Number 1, 2013 UNCONVENTIONAL MAPS: GEOGRAPHY BEYOND THE REAL TERRITORIES ALEXANDRU-IONUŢ PETRIŞOR 1 ABSTRACT - Space is a concept that acquired in time new meanings shifting it from concrete to abstract and adding or subtracting dimensions. Even the geographical space is now claimed as object of study by other disciplines, such as ecology or spatial planning. Along with the concept of “space”, these sciences discovered the potential of geographical approaches, especially of the techniques based on using the Geographical Information Systems, and consequently maps found applications even beyond conventional spaces. The paper examines several mapping approaches, used by other disciplines or even by geography, which go beyond or distort the geographical reality, in an attempt to test the hypothesis according to which such methodological imports were productive for the recipient disciplines. The analysis of six approaches (bacterial geography, time space analyses, spatial interpolation maps, bubble maps, body viewer, and network maps) confirms the hypothesis, but underlines the need for caution in interpreting the results in relationship with the territorial reality, especially when unconventional maps are drawn over the real space. Keywords: space, kriging, bacteria, Body Viewer, ScapeToad INTRODUCTION While the times of greater geographical discoveries seem to be far behind, modern geography records a rapid progress, expanding to over 30 branches (Rosenberg, 2009). Most of them resulted from the relationships established by geography with other sciences, consisting of importing and exporting both concepts and methods. As a result, geography was generalized as a science of the organized space (Ianoş and Heller, 2006). However, while productive in many respects (Ianoş, 2000; Petrişor, 2008), such exchanges induced to the geographers the fear of losing their object of study (Ianoş and Heller, 2006). If geographers are a little bit sceptical, professionals from other fields, even non-spatial (Ianoş, 2000), have found geographical methods, particularly mapping and especially GIS- based mapping, to be productive tools, extremely useful in their activity. A theoretical development facilitating their application was redefining the concept of 'space' associated with the geographical methods. Essentially, space has been seen concretely or abstractly as one-, two- or multi-dimensional (Petrişor, 2008, 2011) and geographical techniques were used over such spaces, often different from the territorial reality, to produce results interpreted according to the theoretical framework of the new discipline. The process led to the emergence of a new science, called Geographical Information Science (briefly GIScience), dealing with the application of geospatial techniques to answer essential scientific questions (Goodchild, 1992, 2004). In epistemological terms, the transfer of concepts and methods is discussed by synergetics, a science of analogies between natural and human sciences regardless of the scale (Haken, 1977). From this perspective, the application of geographic methods in other fields resulted into changes of the method, or at least the way of interpreting the results (Petrişor, 2011). This paper attempts to review several unconventional applications of geographical methods, going as much as possible beyond the conventional geographical data and space, in other areas in 1 Faculty of Urbanism, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, 18-20 Academiei Street, Sector 1, 010014 Bucharest, and National Institute for Research and Development in Constructions, Urbanism and Sustainable Spatial Development URBAN-INCERC, 266 Pantelimon Road, Sector 2, 021652 Bucharest, Romania. E-mail: alexandru_petrisor@yahoo.com