Tokyo, Japan: Hajime Narukawa, Tokyo-based architect-cum-artist created AuthaGraph, a new world map in 2D, which is inspired by the Dymaxion map. The Dymaxion map is known as an alternative of the Mercator-projection map which was developed in 1569 and named after its maker geographer Gerardus Mercator.
Later on, an US engineer, designer and inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), created an alternative to the conventional Mercator-projection map that he named it the Dymaxion map. Featuring jagged edges, this map is rendered on a cut-out version of an odelling ns — a regular polyhedron with 20 identical triangular faces. In inventing his Dymaxion map, Fuller aimed to solve the fundamental flaw in Mercator’s projection: its great distortions of area ratios — distortions that grow worse toward the North and South poles.
The Dymaxion map managed to project relative sizes and shapes of areas much more accurately. But its biggest drawback is its irregular shape that, among other things, breaks up ocean areas. Consequently, ocean currents, which are crucial in the study of climate change and marine ecology, for instance, cannot be adequately illustrated.
This is where Narukawa’s map comes in. The biggest one challenge for Narukawa was how to change a spherical surface into a tetrahedral shape. Eventually, he came up with an idea and divided the spherical surface into 96 regions and turned them into an inflated tetrahedron first, and then distorted it again into a regular tetrahedron — which, when it was cut out, made a rectangle that maintained land ratios and land shapes similar to those in the spherical surface. Using 3-D odelling software, he said he simulated the distortion process countless times on the way to creating his AuthaGraph map.
A former astronaut Mamoru Mohri, who is currently CEO of the Tokyo-based National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan), was so impressed by Narukawa’s work — the AuthaGraph — that he incorporated it into the museum’s interactive data-visualisation project.
Source: Japan Times
