Design Dispatch: The Big City, Writ Small
“The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.”
― E.B. White, Here Is New York
The utter unknowability of a large city is one of its pleasures. Even if we could walk every street and visit every building on a quest to see it all, the constant churn of urban change would require us to immediately start at the beginning again. Perhaps because of this, there’s also something wonderful about taking a wide view of a city — looking past street-level details and trying to see everything at once from afar. These three projects explore this zooming out to great effect: reducing immense urban landscapes to delicate scale models or the streamlined geometries of a subway map.
Microscape
Microscape is a collaboration between New York-based architectural design and visualization firms TO+WN Design and AJSNY. They have developed an extensive digital model of every building in Manhattan and are creating exquisitely detailed 3D-printed models at 1:5000 scale. They’ve carved-up the city into six-inch squares so you can pick out your favorite neighborhoods to display.
3D Printed Paris
Across the waves of a tiny Atlantic Ocean, the folks at Ittyblox are shrinking Paris. Their previous campaigns for miniature, 3D-printed buildings focused on the architecture of New York and Amsterdam. This new Parisian edition features city blocks with miniature mansards and a pocket-sized version of Sainte-Chapelle.
World Metro Map
What if you could take a trip around the world in eighty transfers? The World Metro Map combines the subway systems of 214 cities, reimagining them as a single globe-spanning transport network. Designed by New York’s ArtCodeData collective, the project supports the work of Open Access, a group devoted to compiling data about the accessibility of public places and transportation for people with disabilities.
For more projects that offer fresh perspectives on urban spaces, check out our Architecture and Civic Design categories!
