Manhattan as a vascular organ

As part of their new water-themed issue, the beautifully designed New York Moon has produced this interactive map of the water systems of Manhattan.

[Image: The New York Moon‘s interactive map of the water systems of Manhattan; map by Zack Sultan].

“Beneath New York’s lattices of concrete, iron and landfill lie dozens of organic waterways,” they write. “Using data from an 1865 sanitation map and contemporary satillite photographs, this projection depicts Manhattan as a vascular organ, whose obscure opperation has had powerful bearing on the fate of the city.”
Older issues of the Moon are definitely worth checking out, including their recent look at deserts, underground acoustics, and the idea of a four-dimensional document for “investigating time and space.”
While you’re there, don’t miss the floating bog-city of Lake Titicaca:

Beginning with a sturdy floating bog, and then laying a base of totora reeds over it, the men, women and children of Uros work together, piling the reeds in a different direction every two weeks until they have created a latticework strong enough to hold six or seven homes and one kitchen on each island, a process that takes about eight months. All of the forty-odd islands are then anchored to sticks pitched into the lake’s floor, making the community buoyant but stationary. Though the islands at conception are about three to four feet thick, they will double over time as dying reeds are covered with newer, stiffer ones, a process of renewal repeated until it is time to build an entirely new island.

Note that I hereby pitch a jointly edited future edition of New York Moon, to be curated by BLDGBLOG and Pruned, around the theme of gardens. Late summer 2009.

5 thoughts on “Manhattan as a vascular organ”

  1. Congrats on the future edition of New York Moon, but please get someone to proofread it for you, or be extra vigilant. I see two spelling errors and one missing word in your quote alone.

  2. Seriously. How can people devote so much time to design and not even proofread? Three such errors in about fifty words makes the whole presentation smack of carelessness.

  3. I agree about the errors; however, the design is really lovely and I like the idea very much. There’s really something there, just clean up the presentation.

    James–My mind was there too.

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