Edinburgh Cartographic Institute is an open, welcoming institute with a focus on an education into cartography and the workings of the institute itself.

The building is designed to have a constant connection between the public and private areas; the two sides of the institute merging throughout via visual and physical links.

As well as providing a route through the building connecting St Giles Street and Market Street, the institute holds public and private journeys within its walls. The private journey hosts the inner workings of the institute, from the delivery of new materials, through processing and conservation, to storage within the archive. The parallel public journey encounters the exhibition and viewing of the institute’s wealth of resources, as well as educational facilities, designed to reinvigorate cartography as an art form and profession.

The two journeys weave in and out of the primary central space and the two structural cores, organised by a hierarchy of spaces, dependant on their influence and importance on the journeys.