A fascinating concept: because unhappy with conventional map presentations where every map feature has another distance to the map viewer, the architect Lindsay Churchill turned a globe inside out and put the viewer into the center. The result is the Mapparium, a three-story glass globe, at The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston. A must-visit especially for people who like maps and cartography.
The glass surface produces interesting acoustics inside. You can speak to your friend standing at the other end of the room by whispering to the wall, or standing in the center of the globe you’ll hear yourself talking in surround sound. A recommended visit for sound artists and engineers too I’d guess.
The map itself is a historical snapshot of what the world looked like in the nineteen-thirties – Russia is the Soviet Union, Colonies in Africa and Yugoslavia as one country. It’s interesting to see how the political world has changed. Especially at that scale.
