Tag: buildings
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What’s left of the workhouse? Buildings, street names and famine graves across Britain and Ireland
There is no open list of Britain and Ireland’s workhouses, so I mapped what they left behind in open data: 356 traces, from hospitals and flats to Workhouse Lanes, and 14 of 15 mapped workhouse burial grounds in Ireland.
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The world’s tallest building: who held the record, and for how long
From the Great Pyramid to Jeddah Tower: I followed the title of world’s tallest building through time. Lincoln Cathedral held it for 238 years, New York for 65, and since 1998 it has been in Asia, where 81 of the 98 buildings of 350 m or more now stand.
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Lighthouses of the world: every light on one glowing map
Wikidata knows of 9,770 lighthouses. I mapped them all and switched them on. Most were built in the industrial century, the oldest still standing is Roman, and the brightest coast belongs to Sweden, partly because Sweden wrote its lights down.
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Where the asylums were: the rise, fall and afterlife of Britain’s county asylums
I mapped 233 of Britain’s asylums and psychiatric hospitals from Wikipedia. Most were built between 1845 and 1914, almost none closed until the 1980s, and of the closed sites whose fate is known, 66% are now homes.
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Painted places: where landscape painters painted, and how far from home they went
I mapped 8,533 landscape, marine and city paintings from Wikidata and the 4,740 places they show. The most painted place is a river, the Seine, and half the paintings were made more than 231 km from the painter’s birthplace.
