From the desk of Blue Crow Media (we’ve featured several of their maps before) comes this new map of London, focusing on Postmodernism in the capital. What do they mean by postmodern? Basically, buildings with a distinctive architecture style following on from the spectacular (and divisive) concrete Brutalism buildings of the 1960s.
The map is attractively presented, folded to A5 and contained within a yellow band. Unfolding the map reveals coverage of around 100 postmodern buildings in central and inner London, each building of interest highlighted in red and captioned. On turning over the map, a poster-style gazetteer details the address, architect and age of the featured structured.
The cartographer is on point with the colour set used for this map. Like the era itself, the palette leans towards primary colours – quite strong blues, greens, and yellows, but erring on the side of being tasteful rather than garish (unlike some of the buildings featured!)
Perhaps the best thing about mapping, and visiting, postmodern structures, is that almost none of them are on a standard tourist trail. Focusing a map on a topic like this opens your eyes to a category of structure that you would not normally seek out, or even glance at. Some of the designs may not be to your taste, but they are certainly visually impressive – that is, when you take the time to look at them, as this map encourages.
Like all Blue Crow Media London maps, the background mapping includes the full road network, London’s many parks and waterways, and tube and railway stations. As such the map itself is good enough to navigate by, if you are planning a walking tour of several structures.
Let’s give our London postmodernist building their place beside their famous/notorious Brutalist predecessors, and the Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian and Medieval structures that would be on a classic tourist tour.
You can buy the Postmodern London Map direct from the Blue Crow Media shop.
