Monday, August 03, 2015

The Beautiful Hand Drawn Map of Reykjavik


The Icelandic collective Borgarmynd has created some beautiful hand-drawn maps. Their Reykjavik Center Map is one of my favorite ever online interactive maps.

The Reykjavik Center Map is a hand-drawn watercolor map of the Icelandic capital. The map is made up of 186 A3 separate watercolor sheets, which took a team of architects and designers two years to complete. To create the watercolors Borgarmynd hired a plane to fly over Reykjavik to capture photographs of nearly every house in the city from the same angle. They then used city planning ground-plans to ensure the accuracy of the completed watercolors.

Every tree, flagpole and other object on the map is based on actual objects in the city. The map is also updated every year to add newly constructed buildings and other changes to the city, such as buildings being repainted in new colors.


Borgarmynd is also responsible for Iceland Illustrated, a hand-drawn map of the whole country. As well as the lovingly hand-drawn Icelandic terrain, the map contains the locations of hotels, restaurants and other points of interest in Iceland.

The map also contains around 200 photos of Iceland's wonderful natural environment.

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