Reykjavik Center Map | Hacker News Reader

Reykjavik Center Map

reykjavikcentermap.com

292 pointsTomte80 comments

Hey guys! I´m the cartographer that designed this map, here are a few other examples of our work if anyone´s interested: http://www.borgarmynd.com

A friend let me know about the post and I just wanted to say thanks for posting and feedback, much appreciated :) I got a few of my architect and graphic designer friends to work on this map with me while we were still in school, 7 years ago, and the website with the zoom feature is done by Brian Suda http://www.suda.co.uk A total of 5 people (4 architects & 1 graphic designer) took part in making the map and 3 more of our graphic designer friends helped in one way or another on layout, web design etc.

The map is actually a collage of 186 a3 watercolor sheets that took 2 years (2300 hrs)to 3d model, draw and paint. The watercolor sheets were all based on 3d models we made first of each house, using city planning groundplans and sections, so the accuracy (even though it might look all cute and cuddly) is very high (Every tree, flagpole etc. is based on actual objects) We update the map every year, draw in new buildings, paint in new colors of houses etc.

For those interested, the map is an axonometric projection of my home town Reykjavík, Iceland. We used this kind of projection in order to maintain scale within the map.

ps: I´m on the map, good luck finding me!

Amazing work! Thanks for sharing some backgorund info.

ps. Are you the giant white person laying on the roof? :)

hehe, damnit, you weren´t supposed to find me that fast. Keep the location to yourself ;) and sshhhh....I´m obviously trying to catch up on my tan there, can´t you see how pale we are up here in the arctic?

Beautiful work.

Is it ok to embedded this (and the full Iceland map) with an iframe?

Tack sa mycket :) That shouldn´t be a problem, I´ll look into it.

Actually, if you don't mind I'd love to write a post about the project. If you're up to answering a couple of questions drop me a line at ola@chickenorpasta.com.br. :)

FYI, your site is throwing debug traces in production and that is not something I or others should see: http://i.imgur.com/cWmHNMz.png

Thanks for the heads up!

Wonderful work!

> We update the map every year, draw in new buildings, paint in new colors of houses etc.

It would be cool to have a time slider control to see how the city has changed over time. Similar to what Google Earth does for selecting aerial photos from different dates.

> I´m on the map, good luck finding me!

I'll take a shot at it... I only see a handful of people depicted and they're on the little boats. Are you one of them? Do these possibly represent each of the project collaborators?

Well, you wouldn´t see much difference. A large area of what´s depicted has a preservation status. But great idea, I´ll check the difference in a few years :)

And no, I get seasick, I´m sunbathing on a roof somewhere ;) We were all on the map, I´m noticing some got lost during last update, I´ll add them back in soon!

I think I found you. Are you the white figure?

Maybe you can have an option to highlight the difference from previous year. Shouldn't be a lot of work, seeing as changes are infrequent.

Wow. I'm a graphic designer myself and always wanted to try this for my neighborhood. Do you really go and look at each building and draw it? And do I have to be slightly insane to do this or will I become slightly insane doing this?

hehe, insane is a good word to describe this one. I´m not sure of the long term consequences but there were long nights, weeks, months and years spent on this one.

It´s even a tad bit more than you guessed. First: Make photocopies of ground plans, sections and drawings of each side of appr.600 houses at the city planning office.(appr.3.000 a2 sheets of paper if I remember correctly) Sit down for one summer with two friends, model those buildings and play a lot of ping pong in between to keep mentally stable. Then charter a plane, persuade the air control to get you permission to fly 10 circles over a busy city center to photograph almost each house from the same angle (for colors and details such as flagpoles, trampolines etc.). Then walk the streets to photograph missing parts.

After all of that: Decide on an angle, start trying to find a suitable style, do test blocks, then draw 186 a3 drawings, watercolor each one using the aerial photos for accurate colors and then finally assembling the map, color grading, bunch of dodging and burning, street names, et voilá, you got yourself a map!

No problem really......

Incredible effort! Kudos on keeping it updated. Has Google Earth helped in easing out your workflow and associated costs?

No, I don´t like using their data for anything cause of possible copyright issues. I´ve got a much more detailed, game engine based 3d model of Iceland now than they do anyway ;)

OK. Well … I suddenly decided to start with a very small area. And maybe todays Map services (Apples Flyover, Ex-Nokias Here) can stand in for the plane chartering. And I think I'll draw digital. znor, If you are still around: do you happen to know how graphic designers approached this in a time before computers? I remember seeing maps like this as a kid and assume none back then did 3D-modeling?

Yes, there are many ways of doing this. Some of todays services like StreetView would have helped a lot. But do keep in mind that if you create the data from scratch yourself you´ll have much better control over things and a better understanding of how to portray the data in the best possible manner for each given project. We went the ultra detail-perverted way on this one :) By using our own data I also know for a fact I won´t run into any licensing or copyright issues, and apart from that I´m able to use the 3d models for all sorts of stuff. If you need some further tips you´re free to send me an email at borgarmynd@gmail.com

Hi you should set debug mode to false in production. when i got a 404 it had showed me the line that failed. as well as some other info

So much of the internet is bland and corporatised. Stuff like this adds the humanity back into the net.

Much obliged fellow human :)

Congratulations, this is really a beautiful software. Do you have an idea of the total budget spent in such beautiful project?

All honor of the online solution goes to my friend/genius Brian Suda: http://www.suda.co.uk, though I worked with him on the design and supplied data. 3d,drawing+painting+coding=you don´t wanna know, I tend to shock most customers with initial estimates, which is why most of the projects are self initiated, like this one.

Yes I can imagine that is expensive. But I was just wondering if this kind of software was possible in, per example, cities with "less stable economies", once I know that is expensive and take a lot of hours working on all this details.

yes of course, we´ve used this map zoom solution on a number of our own projects and for different clients. There´s a beautifully simple admin system behind it to add and edit points etc.

Hi Snorri, -J

hehe, I seem to know surprisingly many people here whoever you are

Thanks for this! My wife and I found it very helpful when we were in Reykjavik last year. Actually stitched the tiles together and printed it on one page on our color laser printer... didn't quite do it justice but seeing the actual buildings was super-helpful finding our way around.

I´d say it would be common courtesy to get yourself a poster: http://www.sparkdesignspace.com/is/shop/product/reykjavik-ce... instead of printing out our copyrighted material that took years to make ;)

Hard to carry a 90×67 cm poster around ;) We'd have gladly paid for a foldable map if one were available.

This is really amazing and unique work. In a world of bland maps/websites this is a breath of fresh air.

We built something similar to this a few years ago for our campus (we are a school). Hired an illustrator to do a watercolor of the campus on large tiles (maybe 8" by 11") and then scanned them in at high resolution and created a large image that we ran through OpenLayers [1] and built a searchable campus map. Neat project. Unfortunately, maintaining the watercolor (even with the tiles) as we changed the campus (e.g. construction, new roadways, new names for old POIs) was difficult, and we had to move back to just a PDF.

[1] http://openlayers.org/

I've no idea what this is doing on HN, but it's very nice, and I wish I'd seen it before I was there a few weeks ago. Beautiful city, far bigger and far more modern than I'd imagined, and full of lovely people.

True. It is quite beautiful, but not really the thing I would expect in hacker news to be honest.

Why? It's a great example of marketing and an innovative blend of a modern tiling map and an old school guide map.

This is exactly the sort of thing to expect on HN, especially at a weekend.

I completely agree.. HN is at it's best when it's inspiring, and this is a cool project that sheds light on a city that I'm guessing 95% of HN will never see. It's well done and highly interesting... I dig it.

We hereby dig you dude/dudeness

Sure, but the OP posted it without any kind of story or explanation. I'm glad the creator noticed it and was able to fill us in.

Just to satisfy my curiosity: what do you think should be on HN? What is it about this link that makes you think it's unexpected here?

It's beautiful and a great piece of work - not only its intentions, but also the code behind it. From that perspective all the games posted on HN would be inappropriate..

It´s a shame you missed our map danellis, pm me your address and I´ll gladly send you a hard copy if you want.

Wow, that's a really beautiful map. If possible, I'd love to purchase a hard copy as well! Not sure it's possible to PM on here, but if you email me at rgould@u2622.ca I can send my address.

Thank you, my wife and I would love that, especially as just on the edge of the map is the apartment we rented on AirBNB.

There's no PM facility on HN, but please do get in touch at dan@danellis.me for my address and let me know the best way to pay you.

I know some of the people who made it, and I assure you that they very much built this with a hacker spirit.

We hired the wonderful crew who made this map to design a map of San Francisco for us, they did an unbelievable job: http://theopencompany.net/products/san-francisco-map

Funny, I've had this bookmarked for two years since I visited Iceland in 2013...still look at it from time to time. What an incredible experience, I fell in love with everything except the food. I think Anthony Bourdain said the only place in the world where he's absolutely hated the food was Reykjavik...I can't say the man is wrong. But everything else is wonderful.

I really liked: The bakery culture for breakfasts, good and fresh seafood (if you're okay with eating whale, there's that too), a bit of variety in the diners and fast food places. We hit up a Chipotle-esque place called Serrano that wasn't bad, for instance.

Additionally, in the last few years though there's been a bit of foodie revolution; Kex hostel has some pretty solid dining at their in-house restaurant, and there are a number of 'American New' places sprouting up, both diner- and pub-style.

Anyway, I agree, Iceland was magical. The people were so, so great, the country was gorgeous and full of history, and (for my money) the food wasn't half bad.

> Kex hostel has some pretty solid dining at their in-house restaurant, and there are a number of 'American New' places sprouting up, both diner- and pub-style.

That's the restaurant where my friend worked...though he has moved on.

Second the recommendation here.

What did you dislike about the food?

A little fuzzy since it's been a couple years, but I absolutely hated their obsession with aggressively putting mayo-based sauces on seemingly everything.

s/everything/ready-made sandwiches/;

I live in Iceland. The trick is to either prepare your own sandwiches or eat something else.

The food is getting better! :)

Maybe it helped that my friend is a chef there and took us to the best restaurants, but I had the most amazing food in Iceland back in 2011.

http://fiskmarkadurinn.is/ completely changed my mind about eating Fish and is still the best salmon I've had in my life.

Also probably the best Thai restaurant I've ever been to was in Reykjavik and I live in New York in a neighborhood famous for its Thai restaurants...

I'm with you. Flying in I was watching a show on the entertainment system called "Delicious Iceland" or something. The skies in the show were always blue and the food fresh and awesome. I didn't experience either of those while there. Everything else was fantastic in the true sense of the word.

We all have different tastes, I guess. Humarsúpa, kjötsúpa, and plokkfiskur are some of the most delicious things I've ever tasted.

The best lobster soup (actually, best any soup) I ever had was at Saegriffin, which appears to be either just off the map (bottom left) or not marked, and I also found the incredible hot dog hut.

So our food experience was good, but agree - the experience was incredible. Without a doubt the best day of my travels anywhere in the world was our Golden Circle tour from Reykjavik - 6 friends, great tour guide, drinking chilled vodka in a hot spring while it snowed on us.

I didn't get the hype about their soup, yet can recommend the whale steak.

Ha! Funnily enough, I thought the whale was awful. I'm guessing you and I should never split a meal in a restaurant.

If you like this, I suggest you check edushi.com which does it at the scale of China. Example for Shanghai: http://sh.edushi.com/

Shanghai also has a museum whose centerpiece is a tennis-court-sized 1:500 scale model of the city's downtown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Urban_Planning_Exhibi...

That's the most memorable tourist map I received in 6 months in Europe. It's hanging on my wall right now. Iceland does a really great job with their tourism industry.

except the "tourism industry" hardly helped us at all funding or promoting this map, just a group of friends that love making beautiful maps ;)

If you like that, don't miss the link to http://www.icelandillustrated.com/

This reminds me of my favorite guidebook for the city of Prague which includes annotated illustrations of landmarks with details about features such as the identities of the statues on building facades or the contents of stained glass windows. Really helpful information for the history and architecture buff.

Sounds cool. Do you have a title or ISBN?

Yeah, just went searching in my library for it as I couldn't remember the title, though unfortunately there isn't much online for it:

Prague: Detailed Picture Guide

On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/8086893502/

Here is a listing on an auction site for it that has a few photos of the page detail: http://page13.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r128671359

Lovely map. It could do with clearer borders though. At first, I thought that parts of the map just weren't loading, when in fact I had reached the edge of the drawing.

The cartographer of the map here....... Very good point, I´ll look into a good solution for that, thanks for the feedback, every design can only get better with well grounded criticism.

I found Nonni's!

Food coma time. drool

Explanation: http://www.nonnabiti.is/ Ultimate drunk food.

The Shrimp Boat has a weird, mystical allure.

Nice. This reminds me of the o.cn isometric maps of cities in China. http://sz.o.cn/

Really beautiful, but I wish you could go back easily - i.e. not having to click back through every location you visited.

hmmm....you shouldn´t have to do that. Thanks for the heads up. What kind of browser etc?

Chrome on Mac.

It would've been supercool if it looked hand drawn and 3D at the same time. I don't know how to implement this, but I suppose should be possible with the right tools and a graphic designer who'd grasp the idea.

This is beautiful and fun to explore. I'm curious, with all the time involved is this a viable business venture (through advertising from retailers, sales of prints, etc.) or primarily a labor of love?

primarily a whole lot of labor and a whole lot of love

So apparently they really did close Sirkus[1], but they didn't tear down the house and build anything in its place?

[1] :´(

Great idea! I visited it two times only, but could definitely recognise some areas.

Nice map, needs a lot more points, can users update it by them selves ?

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