Mapping Evolution: NY Subway Map

For the record, I don't read Men's Vogue on a regular basis - no offense to the magazine - I just am already overloaded with periodicals so need to focus. So I was pleased when The Men's Vogue Web Team sent me a link to a recent story on the updates to the iconic 1972 NY Subway Map designed by Massimo Vignelli, as well as a pictorial evolution of the map over the years... as a certifiable map geek - I couldn't resist.

From Men's Vogue: "Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map was hailed as an instant graphic design classic. After recently updating his famous diagram, Vignelli signed 500 limited-edition prints that were available exclusively through Men's Vogue. While the signed version is sold out, unsigned maps are available for free within May 2008 issues of Men's Vogue at select retailers across the U.S."




:: 2008 NYC Subway Map - images via Men's Vogue

The new map is sleek, sexy, and appropriately styled for the NY urbanite... OK, I'm starting to see the whole Men's Vogue connection. But New Yorker's don't carry maps, do they? This isn't communication - this is art and style in manly map form. It's also a graphic design and cartography history lesson to see the evolution of the years of the maps... definitely check out the slide show for all of the maps and some interesting dialogue about the evolution of the graphics - here's a taste:


:: IRT Map (1905) - image via Men's Vogue


:: IRT Map (1924) - image via Men's Vogue

In 1940, the two subway lines were unified, making a much more geographically broad and dense map - that included more detail of the outer boroughs. These maps still had the more locational and scaled traditional map quality.


:: Unified Map (1948) - image via Men's Vogue

This dense amount of data led to more graphical examples, such as the one seen here from 1967 - which began to abstract the shape and landscape to accomodate a more easily organized system of information. This is an interesting phenomenon - as mapping no longer had to be tied to place and became a touchstone for development of more abstracted mapping. Via Men's Vogue: ""Now we have a map that is a dull distorted gray mess," wrote rider Peter Rosenblatt to the New York Times in 1959. "The whole thing is a neat job of camouflage." Salomon's color scheme was quickly replaced, but his approach of simplifying the city and foregrounding the train lines caught on.""


:: Map of New Lines (1967) - image via Men's Vogue


:: Current Map - image via Men's Vogue

The current map is more of a fusion of geographic scale and pictorial abstraction. I have a copy of this map at home as well as one of my favorites - not a subway map, but a pop-up version of Manhattan, which you could hold in your hand and expand to get some additional information. Other than the sheer inventiveness of the idea - I loved the fact that it allowed me to be covertly hide my tourist-status while not getting lost... priceless in a City where affect is everything.

Maps are interesting - as they are a fusion of design and communication - as well as a contentious and evocative pictorial story of place. Thinking back to settlement, or perhaps the potential Mannahatta of old - we get a glimpse of how much the concept of place is tied with topography, history, and usage. One quote from the Men's Vogue article sums up the idea and conflict between this design, reality and communication:

"When Massimo Vignelli was hired by the city to redesign the subway map in 1971, he was known principally as a designer, not a cartographer. His approach -- simplicity through geometry -- reduced New York to its essence. Vignelli straightened out bent subway lines, reshaped the city, and even rearranged roads, putting the stop for 50th Street and Broadway west of 50th and 8th for example. "Of course I know Central Park is rectangular and not square," Mr. Vignelli told the New York Times in 2006. "Who cares? You want to go from Point A to Point B, period."


:: Central Park Squared - the 1972 map - image via Men's Vogue

North Dakota Topography

Having grown up in the flat-ness of North Dakota, and spending 20 winters or so there through the height of the Cold War, I just had to share the recent post from Pruned that outlined an amazing landscape-art/homeland security from an anti-ballistic missile complex. The project stems from an installation for the Safeguard Program - a short-lived program from the 1960's to protect ICBM silos throughout the plains. Located in Nekoma, ND (near Langdon, like that helps) the facility photos come to Pruned via "... the HABS/HAER collections in the Library of Congress comes these gorgeous photographic documentations..."






: images via Pruned

A little more digging found an interesting article from Lone Prairie Art Works, entitled Nixon's Folly. The name comes from the origins in the Nixon administration. Some more on the form: "Nekoma's pyramid rises from the plains like a prairie iceberg. Most of it's cyclopic structure is buried below ground, leaving only the tip to poke through and be seen. According to our tour guide, one of the few men still taking care of the abandoned site, the interior of the structure has been stripped bare, but is so huge and cavernous that many of the hallways and passages deep inside have their own atmosphere. He told of how, on certain days, some hallways have fog rolling about inside. There is also much water, particularly since the water table in the region has been high since about 1993."

The site is still visible and visitable (or at least seems to be) from these pictures...






:: images via Lone Prairie Art Works

The beauty of these structures is the striking form - accentuated by the utter flatness of topography in North Dakota - an endless horizon that is both mind-numbing and amazing. My memories were always sort of a hypnosis as field after field of wheat, soybeans, or sunflowers rolled by, along with the persistent and level-thin horizon. This is something I never really truly appreciated until living in Oregon, where stunning mountains, forests and hillsides offers wonderful views - but rarely this thin line as far as the eye can see.

:: image via DKimages

I admit I've never seen the structures at Nekoma - and it's kind of disappointing (although I'm planning a trip in the fall - so maybe a side trip is in order). It's fascinating that this structure may be one of the most significant structures in the state - in terms of height and mass. With a low mountain range as the highest points of topography - maxing out at around 3,300 feet in elevation as a major feature, and a stunning valley topography as the other significant topography, the glacial scouring that flattened most of the state 10,000+ years ago definitely makes a statement. In fact the high point in the state is a mere 3,506 ft - White Butte and it's distinctive shark fin make for a very horizontal state.


:: image via Wikipedia

The terrain made larger structures very visible - but the most insidious cargo hid underground, in the architectural equivalent of a brown paper bag. The interesting part of the landscape of North Dakota is that it is both possible and impossible to hide missile silos - and any traveler of a back road will see the familiar site alongside - thin gravel road, rectangular chain link, small buff colored out-building, a couple of antennae, and a Letter-Number designation. See below for a typical entry shot, (a protest), and aerial photo showing the innocuous looking sites amidst plowed fields.


:: image via Picassa (Judy)


:: image via ABC News


:: image via Minot AFB Minuteman Missile Site Coordinates

Overall it's interesting to see how ubiquitous these landscape elements were - even in their stealthy locations in a sometimes featureless landscape. The last time I visited North Dakota - it was the week of 9/11 - and a trip from Minot to Teddy Roosevelt National Park showed no traffic - save for armed humvee's with machine gunner at the ready on top. It was as close to some form of apocalypse I've felt. It was not nice.

It's telling how much we can see, and accept in our landscape. Whether this is nuclear missiles, toxic waste, strip mines, clear cuts - and any scar we inflict or poison we hold. It's something that we pass by and accept (sometimes willingly, other times oblivious) - perhaps more in the open landscape than in our cities. A final word from Lone Prairie Art Works, Julie R. Neidlinger, about the removal of her family's nearby missle silo:

"I had to relearn the horizon without those lights being there. They'd been there my entire life. Now I, along with many other people here including my father, wonder what the plans for the buildings on this much smaller site are, and if we'll get a crack at them since it was on our land. I know of more than a few farmers who have inquired about the metal quonset-like structure. The realization is, unfortunately, that by the time the military gets around to the issue, the buildings will be fit for the bulldozer and not much else. They've been empty for about ten years.But I still miss the lights. Texas has their Friday Night Lights and football. We had our nuclear missiles.Nostalgia. It can even make you miss nukes."

Eikongraphia's MoPo 2008

In this day and age of exit polls and populartity projections - time for one related to the top architecture blogs out there. A L+U favorite is Eikongraphia, has a great, semi-scientific method for determining the popularity of focused blogs out therer. It's not mistake that certain blogs have extremely high readership and popularity is by being inclusive of a number of topics. And one with perhaps the broadest range is BLDGBLOG.


:: image via BLDGBLOG

The list of MoPo 2008
1. BLDGBLOG
2. City of Sound
3. Archidose
4. Pruned
5. Interactive Architecture
6. Architecture.mnp
7. Subtopia
8. Life Without Buildings
9. Tropolism
10. Mirage Studio 7
11. Strange Harvest
12. Architechnophilia
13. The Where Blog
14. The Arch
15. Super Colossal
16. Sit down man, you’re a bloody tragedy
17. Brand Avenue
18. Architecture Chicago Plus
19. Hugh Pearman
20. Varnelis
21. Lebbeus Woods
22. Part IV
23. Eye Candy
24. Architectural Videos
25. Kosmograd

There are definitely some I don't read often - and it's a great opportunity to add and augment my reading - based on my recent dissatisfaction with a number of the blogs that are more tangential than these. A few had dropped off my reading, such as Part IV and Subtopia, for lack of relevant content. Others I just don't really connect with what the directive is, such as Lebbeus Woods (love the drawings), Architectural Videos (not a fan of videos), and sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy (great band name though).

To classify a blog as 'Architectural' has it's own range of perils - as a hundred other topics are woven throughout the content of all of these - with perhaps the common thread as buildings. Ideas such as urbanism, sustainability, landscape, planning, design, materials, and on and on... For instance, Pruned is not a blog about architecture in any form, but is also not purely about landscape - which is part of the appeal. The Where is less about architecture than planning and urbanism - with forays into the realms of architecture where necessary. City of Sound for the most part is a lot of information from a very wide net, and the random bits I glean are gold, amidst clutter. Ditto for a number of the remainder of the list of 25 - the range of info is broad - which is indicative of the blurring of lines between all of these varied disciplines.

Honestly, for all of my joy of some of these blogs, the are always hit or miss. BLDGBLOG for instance, is either so far into some abstraction that it's not relevant (to me) - and I skip it often. The next post blows me away with something amazing. So we keep reading. Additionally, there's a taste-factor. Writing styles, pretty pictures, heady dialogue, witty critique. We're all looking for that something that not only draws us in but keeps us coming back.

It's always one of those 'how do I rate?' sort of reactions... but for the life of me I can't parse the system in a degree to be able to tell what is apples to apples. Either way, I'm happy with a Technorati rating of almost 50, and readership in the range of 300+ a day. And in the short time I've been posting and tracking, I've recently hit milestones of 20,000 visits and 50,000 page views, both of which blow me away.

Anyway, I'm glad to see these lists, if purely for the opening up of some more resources for keeping this blog as well rounded - and well read, as possible. If Mr. van Raaij is willing to see how I rate, I'd love to see - but alas, I'm pretty happy with the three months of exponential growth - and the great feedback, commentary, and criticism. As always, any of the above is much welcome.