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Map Hole Points The Way
Map Hole is a new road guidance tool designed to direct pedestrians and travelers to their final destination using existing elements in the urban landscape. It locates the pedestrian with a starting point and provides information on the exact distance or average walk time to the listed landmarks. It sounds intriguing but I feel like I need a cartography degree to understand it. If this were real, you might just enter a city full of confused people looking down at the ground.
Designer: Jiae Kwon
25 Comments »
Brennan says
This is almost exactly like the man hole design a few weeks ago except without rain collecting.
The first one was shut down because man holes are in the middle of the road; where cars, trucks and busses are traveling remarkably fast.
Completely dangerous design, making people look down in the middle of a busy street to get directions that they probably have on their phone/PDA.
Irresponsible. Design should not endanger people.
venati says
true, but i reckon some country have their manhole on pedestrian, such as japan and few other asian countries.
so it might be suitable for those nations rite?:)
and also compared to that manhole from few weeks ago, this one is more visible.
Brennan says
Actually, it’s true. Theme parks and zoos might really like this, even just as a map idea and not for manhole purposes.
Perhaps place them on sidewalk corners?
It defeats the manhole purpose entirely, but it keeps the citizens safe and (hopefully) not as lost.
Batterycentury says
Nice design but as Brennan says, “man holes are in the middle of the road; where cars, trucks and busses are traveling remarkably fast.” Just for design.
Victor Assis says
1 – It will be way more expensive to produce every-single-manhole in the city with a different pattern than to produce all of them the same, like they normally are.
2 – Sooner or later, manholes are actually opened! Guess what’s going to happen to the map if the worker just place the manhole in a random fashion.
3 – Yes, its pretty unsafe stop in the middle of the street, but even if it was in a sidewalk, it will get dirty soon. And, with the passing of the years, the map will fade. But even worse; in a few months it’ll be outdated. Things change places in a city.
p.s..: What’s with this obsession with manholes around here???
RB says
Nice concept, but industrial design is all about cost. This project will cost too much(nowadays) for the cities who will want to implement it.
But once again… nice concept!
AlienzExist says
Im tired of these photoshop projects where nothing has actually been designed except a piece of paper and some graphics. This is the same as the other man-hole-cover-map idea. What is going on? Where do you get your ideas from?
b0g3l says
why do i have a very strong feeling i’ve just seen this recently… ow yeah, there was this directive manhole design that doesn’t work
Tony says
Designers and future designers. Please think of your end user and purchaser. Doing a mental exercise is fine put say that upfront. The usability on these is horrible for all of the reasons mentioned above.
Why is it that some designers seem to want to mental masturbate then putting their design powers to something that can really be produced and/or used effectively by an end user?
r4i karte says
Designer is proposal would create a cover that would be applied on top of manholes with the center indicating where the pedestrian is currently standing. Placed around the circle are pointers to sites of interest with the approximate walking time listed next to them. Kwon also provides a proposal for selling advertising space to local establishments.
Klappstuhl says
It would be easier to just spray-paint a stencil of a vectorized map on each street corner. Add a red dot for the current position, and you’re done.
PS: Assuming that someone does maintenance and has to go down there, do you really think he’ll place it back on the same way as before!?
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