Horizonless Projection
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Due to my horrendous sense of direction, I own a Garmin nüvi 1250. I thought it would help help me navigate the network of roads in the city. But, of course, it didn’t. Apart from a highly inefficient user interface, the screen resolution and size do not accommodate the needs of frantic, nervous driver cursing behind the wheel. A bird’s eye view of a map works well to provide a general context for wayfinding, but does not connect with what you see all around you (complete with buildings and roads). There must be a better way yes?
I came across this project called ‘Here & There’ by Jack Schulze and Matt Webb - a London-based design consultant duo - that melds the two views (bird’s eye view and first-person view) together, creating a map that translates well to my perpetually-lost needs:
The map is of Manhattan looking uptown from 3rd and 7th and its presentation is is exactly the kind that gives you useful spatial information!
“Imagine a person standing at a street corner. The projection begins with a three-dimensional representation of the immediate environment. Close buildings are represented normally, and the viewer himself is shown in the third person, exactly where she stands. As the model bends from sideways to top-down in a smooth join, more distant parts of the city are revealed in plan view. The projection connects the viewer’s local environment to remote destinations normally out of sight.” (Here & There)
Read more about the project here.