Dymaxion map

Unfolded Dymaxion map with nearly-contiguous land masses Dymaxion map as an unfolded icosahedron Another rendering of a Dymaxion map This icosahedral net shows connected oceans surrounding Antarctica

The Dymaxion map or Fuller map is a projection of a World map onto the surface of a polyhedron, which can then be unfolded to a net in many different ways and flattened to form a two-dimensional map which retains most of the relative proportional integrity of the globe map.

It was created by Buckminster Fuller, and patented by him during 1946, the patent application showing a projection onto a cuboctahedron. The 1954 version published by Fuller with the title The AirOcean World Map used a slightly modified but mostly regular icosahedron as the base for the projection, and this is the version most commonly referred to today. The name Dymaxion was applied by Fuller to several of his inventions.

Unlike most other projections, the Dymaxion is intended only for representations of the entire globe. It is not a gnomonic projection, whereby global data expands from the center point of a tangent facet outward to the edges. Instead, each triangle edge of the Dymaxion map matches the scale of a partial great circle on a corresponding globe, and other points within each facet shrink toward its middle, rather than enlarging to the peripheries. ^[1]

Properties

Fuller claimed that his map had several advantages over other projections for world maps.

It has less distortion of relative size of areas, most notably when compared to the Mercator projection; and less distortion of shapes of areas, notably when compared to the Gall–Peters projection. Other compromise projections attempt a similar trade-off.

More unusually, the Dymaxion map does not have any "right way up". Fuller argued frequently that in the universe there is no "up" and "down", or "north" and "south": only "in" and "out".^[2] Gravitational forces of the stars and planets created "in", meaning 'towards the gravitational center', and "out", meaning "away from the gravitational center". He attributed the north-up-superior/south-down-inferior presentation of most other world maps to cultural bias.

There isn't any one "correct" view of the Dymaxion map. Peeling the triangular faces of the icosahedron apart in one way results in an icosahedral net that shows an almost contiguous land mass comprising all of earth's continents – not groups of continents divided by oceans. Peeling the solid apart in a different way presents a view of the world dominated by connected oceans surrounded by land.

Impact

A 1967 Jasper Johns painting, "Map (Based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Airocean World)", depicting a Dymaxion map, hangs in the permanent collection of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

References

1. ^ Fuller, Ideas and Integrities (1969 ed., p. 139).
2. ^ Fuller, Intuition (1972).

External links

• Fuller Map homepage
• Dymaxion Project Animation
• Fuller Projection
• Icosahedron and Fuller maps
• Table of examples and properties of all common projections
• Metamute's rendition of the Dymaxion map 2001
• Dymaxion Projection converter in VTP Software
• Dynamically generated maps based on the Dymaxion projection
• Evolution of the Dymaxion Map: An Illustrated Tour and Critique