Dwelling-Scapes
There are only 3 things in the world cooler than modern architecture: Legos, Steak Frites and Google Earth. We try and work Legos in wherever we can and this isn’t a food blog so that leaves us with Google Earth for today’s entry. We’ve rounded up a series of images on Google Earth displaying patterns of human habitation from around the globe – or Dwelling-Scapes if you’ll allow us to fabricate an architecty term. “But are the images all at the same scale so that we can compare and contrast?” – you ask. You bet they are, we didn’t buy Photoshop just to dinker around with finished photos of hot modern homes. Collecting images from Google-Earth can be overwhelming so we gave ourselves a few stipulations:
1. The images focus on practical, utilitarian forms of habitation (beat-it St. Peter’s Piazza)
2. The forms of habitation are in use today (86 Pompeii).
3. Each image is taken at an elevation of 2,500 feet above the Earth’s surface.
4. Each image is cropped to show a ½ mile x ½ mile swatch or 2,640 feet square (a 6.46 inch square crop in photo shop for the mathematically inclined).
Here’s what we came up with:
Broendby, Copenhagen
Levittown, New York, U.S.A.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Celebration, Florida, U.S.A.
Sea Ranch, California, U.S.A.
Venice, Italy
New Delhi, India
Palm Springs, California, U.S.A.
Nairobi (Kibera slum), Kenya
Antigua, Guatemala
Mexico City, Mexico
Naples, Italy
Reykjavik, Iceland
Caracas, Venezuela
Casablanca, Morocco
Guatemala City, Guatemala
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Nuuk, Greenland
New York City (West Village), New York, U.S.A.
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
7 Comments
Other Links to this Post
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Building-Scapes « BUILD Blog — February 19, 2008 @ 10:22 pm
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Densities & Openings « BUILD Blog — July 22, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
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Dwelling-Scapes | HOhong.co.kr — July 19, 2010 @ 3:27 pm
By Anonymous, February 19, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
What are the coordinates for the Broendby, Copenhagen image? I wanna look at that one closer!
And the Casablanca, Morocco looks like a game of Tetris…awesome!
By spark, February 19, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
oops, didn’t mean to go anon on ya. that comment was from me.
By Andrew, February 19, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
Broendby is a neighborhood south-west of Copenhagen
the coordinates are:55 38 12.99N 12 23 49.85E
Yeah – the Morocco find was a total surprise – I was actually looking for images of the enormous and chaotic public markets there when I came across the tetris.
By Christina, September 28, 2008 @ 12:19 am
I live quite close to Brøndby, and can I just say – from ground level, the ‘hood is not nearly as impressive as Google Earth makes it out to be. It’s generally thought of as a “bad-boy” place, but must say that I feel the need to reconsider after seeing it put into context like that. Sometimes, I suppose it’s all about the context.