AuthaGraph Map: The World's Best Map?

The map above is the AuthaGraph world map by Designer Hajime Narukawa.

And it is viewed by some as being “almost perfectly-proportioned.”

From the map creators on how it was made:

This rectangular world map called AuthaGraph World Map is made by dividing a spherical surface into 96 triangles. And then transferring it to a tetrahedron while keeping the area’s proportions.
Finally unfolding it to a rectangle.

The world map can be tiled in any directions without visible seams.

From this map-tiling, a new world map with triangular or rectangular outline can be framed out with various regions at its center.

The name, AuthaGraph is from authalic and -graph.

And the inspiration:

Antarctica was found in 1820 and the first man reaches the North Pole in 1909. In the 20th century the world tended to be framed by the East-West relations and the North-South problem.

Our interest has been mainly on land since it has been our living environment. Meanwhile from the late 20th century the resources and environment problems have spread our interests over the polar regions and oceans such as,

(1) Sea ice around the North pole representing the global warming,

(2) Territorial sea claims for marine resources,

(3) An ozone hole above the South Pole,

(4) Melting glaciers in Greenland, a cause that may submerge Tuvalu,

(5) El Nino in the ocean, a cause of an unusual weather that eventually influence to the economy on land.

The AuthaGraphic world map aims to provide a new view point to perceive the world by equally showing these interests spread over the globe.

In 2016 it won the prestigious Japanese Good Design Award.

And from the award (translated from Japanese):

This is a square world map that shows an accurate overall picture of the Earth, with no distortions in size or shape.

By looking at this map, you can understand that Greenland is much smaller than Australia, that it makes sense to fly via Houston when going from Narita Airport to Brazil to watch the Olympics, and that Antarctica is the only continent that faces the Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Pacific Ocean.

At the same time, it has the characteristic of being able to depict a worldview of a spherical world with no dead ends, and a polycentric worldview as expressed by the term G20.

In order to accurately grasp the overall picture of the complex world that has entered the Anthropocene, we have designed a world map that depicts the world in a more accurate way than ever before.

Background:

The Mercator projection, which can be projected onto a square flat surface, was useful as a guidepost during the Age of Discovery and has been familiar to people for many years.

However, this projection cannot properly represent the Arctic Ocean or Antarctica. In fact, Mercator did not even know that Antarctica existed. However, even now, when times have changed dramatically, the latest map services continue to use the Mercator projection.

Surprisingly, there is a background to why progress in projections that define our view of the world has halted for so long.

Broader significance:

Until now, Japan has been called the Far East. This is the perspective of the eastern edge when viewed from the perspective of existing world maps that place Europe at the center.

Other terms such as “down south,” “up north,” “Middle East,” and “Third World” are also from a European perspective. It is expected that the AuthaGraph maps that will be submitted will give rise to terms to replace these geographical expressions, in other words, innovative perspectives to look at the world, and will serve as a catalyst for proposals that will steer the world toward a more balanced international situation.

Ingenuity:

Map projection has four measures, i.e., area, shape, direction, and distance, which means four “correct” values. It has been mathematically proven that there is no solution that satisfies all of the criteria, and correcting the area increases the distortion of the shape.

In the early stages of development, we specialized in area and searched for a map with a perfect area. This is because the logic was clear and it was easy for map experts to understand.

On the other hand, we received some harsh comments, such as “the shape feels strange.” This is my wife. Based on the criticism that “even if the area is correct, if the shape is distorted, women and children will not look at it,” we devised a combination of projection methods that can be used to draw on a flat surface in a way that does not look strange to the way land and sea look on a globe, while trading off the four distortions, while making the area as correct as possible and reducing the distortion of the shape.

I would like to convey the ingenuity and ingenuity that we put in, even though it is a modest effort, to arrive at a map with a balance and repeated trial and error, in a question that does not have a perfect solution that satisfies all of the criteria.

Here are a few more images of the map and globe: