With the advancement of technology, the ways in which we perceive information have become increasingly visual, interactive and all around multi-dimensional – so why shouldn’t maps evolve to reflect it? These map concepts, installations and renderings in a variety of materials and forms let navigational data pop off the page into 3D creations, or blend the information with functional objects to tell a story.

3D Tube Map of London Made of Pipes

British designer Nick Fraser used a network of copper pipes on a black wall to create a map of London’s tube system, making the nickname literal. To differentiate the different lines, Fraser uses a series of colored washers.

Neon Subway Lights by Petr Koll

Subway maps for various unnamed cities are rendered in vivid neon lights by designer Petr Koll for this fun series. What you can’t see in the still images is that the lines light up one at a time and then blink together.

‘Philadelphia Explained’ Installation Art by Paula Scher

A hand-drawn map of Philadelphia is fitted to the interior surfaces of a gallery using dimensional modeling, immersing visitors in a navigational experience as “a personal reaction to information overload.” Famed designer Paula Scher worked with students at her alma mater, the Tyler School of Art, to create the installation.

Rijksmuseum Paper Pathfinder

How do you explain to visitors in clear visuals how they can navigate 8,000 objects spanning 800 years of art spread through 80 individual galleries in the same building? Graphic designer Marjin van Oosten came up with a refreshingly simple analog solution: a pop-up paper model of the building with color-coded and labeled ‘floors.’ It lets you see the whole building at once and physically hold a model of it in your hands to get a better idea of where things are.

3D Map of Tokyo’s Subway System

The surprising number of dips and turns in Tokyo’s subway system, hidden from sight, are revealed in this rollercoaster-like model by Takatsugu Kuriyama. Different colored liquids pulse through the various tubes to show movement in each line.

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Seeing Space In New Ways 13 Creative Maps Navigational Guides

Wear your love for your city on your sleeve – and your t-shirt, tote bag, necklace, cuff bracelet and bandanna. Aerial maps, transit maps, city skylines, notable architecture and even the abstracted colors of a certain neighborhood are printed onto all manner of urban wearables in this collection of city-themed clothes and accessories.

New York City Subway Map Tights

Display your love for your hometown as a relocated New Yorker with these Manhattan subway map tights, or be prepared for fellow transit riders to peer at your legs trying to figure out which stop to get off at if you decide to don them in the city.

Handscape City Rings

Turn your fingers into a ‘handscape’ with these rings by Studio ZLDA, designed to be worn together to create a personal collection of buildings, trees and tiny figures.

Cityscape Clothes Valet

Start your day off getting dressed next to this cityscape clothes valet by Andrea Brugnera for Formabilio, a simple geometric structure held together with small leather straps.

City Grid Dog Tags

This dog tag IDs where you come from in a more abstract and visual way, with a cut-out of an urban grid pattern. The collection from A Minimal Studio includes over 120 major cities from 32 countries around the world, and can be used as a functional map.

Neighborhood Scarves

The visuals of a particular spot are captured on video, stretched out and processed to create an abstracted motion of the place in visual form. The Brooklyn Block then prints this image on scarves so you can wear the colors and patterns of your favorite neighborhood.

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Wearable Cities 15 Urban Patterned Outfits Accessories

Rivers become veins in detailed portraits, mirrored city blocks resemble modernized Persian rugs and urban topographies emerge from rolls of tape in these map-based works of art. Some create the images of cities, countries and continents from unexpected materials, like Manhattan rendered in a 2.5-ton block of marble, while others use complex aerial imagery and cartography as an unexpected medium for drawings and sculpture.

Google Maps as Persian Rugs by David Thomas Smith

Images composited from Google Maps screencaps are reconstructed piece-by-piece into mirrored images inspired by Persian rugs in ‘Anthropocene,’ a series by David Thomas Smith. The Dublin-based artist chooses locations that are centers of global capitalism, including Dubai, the Beijing International Airport, and industrial sites like the Delta Coal Port in Vancouver, British Columbia. “This collision between the old and the new, fact and fiction, surveillance and invisibility, is part of a strategy to reflect on the global order of things,” says the artist.

Manhattan in 2.5 Tons of Marble

Japanese sculptor Yutaka Sone did, in fact, use Google Maps and aerial photographs to render an accurate replication of Manhattan in this whopping 2.5-ton block of white marble. But most of his inspiration actually came from a series of helicopter rides in which he got a feel for the city, ultimately carving it as if it were an elevated plateau. The details of the sculpture are so accurate, residents of the city can locate their own buildings by counting the blocks.

Topographical Tape Maps by Takahiro Iwasaki

Best-known for his intricate thread sculptures, Japanese artist Takahiro Iwasaki has also created topographical maps carefully sliced into fat rolls of gray and blue electrical tape. The landscape replicated on the gray roll is Victoria Peak, a mountain located on the western half of Hong Kong Island.

Map Portraits by Ed Fairburn

Ed Fairburn uses paper maps as canvases for incredibly detailed portraits, rendering human features as topographical landscapes on top of street maps, star charts, railroad blueprints and other types of maps. The portraits seem to blend seamlessly with the landscape features, with rivers and roads running through them like veins.

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More Map Art

Wear your civic pride. Startup company CityFabric produces hand-crafted t-shirts, totes and prints bearing maps of thirteen cities around the United States including Atlanta, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, CityFabric got a big boost from a Kickstarter campaign in 2011 and has now opened an online store.

Far superior to touristy shirts reading out the name of your favorite city, these maps are an eye-catching, graphic way to proclaim your love. The maps are in ‘figureground’ form, meaning they’re aerial maps that show only the masses of buildings and the voids of the streets. This type of map provides a picture of the architectural nature of a city as well as its layout.

Matt Tomasulo founded CityFabric, Inc. in 2011 and launched a Kickstarter project, far exceeding his original goal to raise over $36,000. The help of the project’s enthusiastic backers not only enabled CityFabric to begin printing on a larger scale and expand to new cities, but also to start on a larger goal: using these civic-minded products to fuel civic-minded projects.

Believing that the more people talk about a place, the more they’ll get involved in their community, CityFabric has begun funding and promoting small-scale civic and social interventions. The first was ‘Walk Raleigh’, a guerrilla wayfinding system of 27 signs placed at 3 intersections in downtown Raleigh. The second employed non-permanent industrial sidewalk stickers to help direct pedestrians in New York City.