ALEXCIOUS

The Winner of 2016 GOOD DESIGN GRAND AWARD in Japan!

You can rearrange the center of the world

This AuthaGraph Puzzle is composed of 24 triangular pieces. When you start to play with the puzzle, if you are not familiar with the geography and this new type of world map, you can assemble them by referring to a world map printed on an attached steel base plate. Once you succeed in constructing the puzzle, you can re-arrange these 24 pieces to construct different maps with a different region at its center. You can re-arrange them to construct other maps with different shapes, triangles, rhombus, and wider or narrower rectangles as well.

This product was originally made as an art piece for showcasing in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Figures of continents and islands are printed by laser engraving. The base plate is made of stainless plate. Once you make a world map, you can shift and attach some pieces in a different way and make another map.

The AuthaGraph world map is a modern innovative map that frames the world’s physical components (continents, seas, etc.) in a 2D rectangle while representing their relative sizes and the shape of coastlines as accurately as possible. Antarctica, for instance, can be seen at the bottom right, close to South America. This map is designed to place the Pacific Ocean in the center position.

This 'AuthaGraph' World Map is generated through the following process:
1. Globe surface is divided into 96 oblong tiles.
2. These 96 tiles are projected on an inflated tetrahedron having 24 tiles on each face while maintaining the area ratio of each tile.
3. The inflated tetrahedron is flattened into a regular tetrahedron while keeping the area ratio of each tile.
4. A development diagram obtained by cutting out the regular tetrahedron globe becomes a rectangular world map in a √3:4 aspect ratio.