Comprised of six volumes published between 1572 and 1617, the Civitates orbis terrarum (“the Civitates”)portrayed itself as invitation to explore, as its name would suggest, the “cities of the world.” Originating as the collaborative effort of engraver Frans Hogenberg and Catholic cleric Georg Braun in Cologne (a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire in modern-day Germany), the atlas boasts 546 views of urban spaces from across the globe “in the form of prospects, bird’s-eye views, and maps.”
READ MOREIt perhaps proves surprising, if not paradoxical, then, that the Civitates was envisaged, produced, and printed in Cologne by two Cologne residents—Hogenberg an émigré to the free imperial city and Braun a native. The material history of the Civitates thus finds its roots firmly grounded in a particular place, a singular German city, seemingly belying the reality of the atlas’ global scope. And yet, a fuller picture of the atlas as a physical object that has traversed space and time, whose influences and impact stretch beyond Cologne in the years of its publication, reveal that its scope was more global than even its name suggests.
READ MOREIn the Visualizing Cities project this semester, one of my first tasks in Houdini was to modify the Python code that processed our JSON data. The original node resulted in many unused fields being present in the data spreadsheet, and I modified the processing method to first iterate through the data and record a list of the fields that were used. The rest of the processing code could use this list to determine whether each field in a template file (meta.json) was necessary. Regarding efficiency, iterating through the data file twice is only a linear increase in time complexity, but since it would be best if we did not iterate through the data file twice, future work might consider creating the necessary fields on the first pass through the data file.
READ MOREFor my Houdini tasks, I focused on the set up of the camera. My time was split between experimenting with the parameters of the camera node, learning how to make the image projected by the camera match the original chorography as much as possible, and investigating how to move the 2-D & 3-D objects in the Houdini environment while maintain the appearance (via scale) of the projected image.
READ MORELisbon was the vast Portuguese Empire’s capital city. Along with other smaller Portuguese territorial possessions, Braun and Hogenberg depicted this capital city in the first edition of Civitates Orbis Terrarum in 1572.
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