Journal

Studio notes: Longleat joins the library
The next square into the workshop is Longleat, in Wiltshire — a kilometre centred on the house Sir John Thynne built between 1568 and 1580, one of the earliest and most complete Elizabethan houses in England. The grounds around it were reworked two centuries later by Lancelot "Capability" Brown, whose lakes and tree lines still shape the parkland the house sits in. Longleat was the first stately home in the country to open to the public, in 1949, and in 1966 its grounds became the site of the first drive-through... Read more...
Studio notes: Lincoln joins the library
The newest square in the workshop is Lincoln — a kilometre centred on Exchequergate, where the cathedral and the castle face one another across the same small square. Lincoln Cathedral sits at the top of the hill, its west front and central tower rising over the ridge the city is built on. Directly opposite, Lincoln Castle holds the other side of the square — a Norman motte-and-bailey with two mounds, one of only a handful of English castles built that way. Steep Hill runs down between them, the cobbled street... Read more...
Studio notes: what we have been building
A short note from the workshop on the last couple of weeks. None of it is loud, but each change makes the plates read a little closer to the ground they trace. Landmarks that hold their shape Most of a Cityform plate is built from LIDAR — height measured from the air, terrace by terrace. That works for the ordinary fabric of a city, but a handful of buildings have a silhouette you read from the river, and a flat height field flattens them. So we have been rebuilding those... Read more...
3D city map vs framed map print: which gift lasts?
A framed map print and a 3D printed city model both mark a place. They are not the same object, and they suit different gifts. Here is the honest comparison. Flat ink vs measured relief A print is ink on paper: streets and labels on a flat plane. A 3D model is the terrain itself — building heights measured from LIDAR, the valley sides and embankments raised to scale. If the place has real shape — a ridge, a harbour, a river basin — the model shows it and the... Read more...
Sheffield in 3D: what the city centre model shows
Sheffield is a city of valley sides, and a flat map hides that. The 3D model does not. The Sheffield city centre plate holds a 1 km square at 1:11000, and the relief shows how the centre sits between rising ground on either side. The square The model centres on the Town Hall and Pinstone Street, taking in the Peace Gardens and the blocks around them. Around that civic core the ground climbs — the print traces the gradient that anyone who has walked from the station up to West... Read more...
Custom coordinates: design any 1 km² of Britain
The ready-made cities cover the obvious centres. Make Yours covers everywhere else. It is the interactive picker on the site that lets you place a 1 km square anywhere in Britain, see the relief render, and order that exact model — your coordinates, built to scale. Pick the square Pan and zoom to the spot that matters: a home street, a stretch of coast, a valley, a campus. The picker draws a 1 km × 1 km box and centres the model on it. What sits inside the box is... Read more...
Personalised map gifts for the places people remember
A map gift works when it marks somewhere specific — a first flat, a university city, a street someone grew up on. A Cityform model does that in three dimensions: a 1 km square rebuilt at 1:11000 on a 9 × 9 cm plate, with the place name and coordinates engraved on a steel label. Here is how to match one to the occasion. For a housewarming or first home Centre the model on the new address. The square shows the streets they now walk — the junction at the... Read more...
How a 3D printed city map is made: from LIDAR to your shelf
Every Cityform model starts as data, not clay. A 1 km × 1 km square of a real city is measured, rebuilt as a 3D mesh, and printed at 1:11000 on a 9 × 9 cm plate. Here is the full process, stage by stage. 1. The survey data Two open sources do the measuring. Environment Agency LIDAR records ground and rooftop heights from the air, so building heights are measured rather than guessed. OpenStreetMap supplies the footprints, the street grid, and the water. Together they fix where every terrace,... Read more...
Welcome
This is the first note from the studio. Cityform started with one stubborn question: what would your particular kilometre look like, lifted off the map and pressed into something you could pick up? I grew up looking at street atlases — the kind with grid squares and key features picked out in red. As a kid I would flip to the page my house sat on and stare at the geometry. Where the roads bent. Where the railway cut through. Which side of the river I lived on. There is... Read more...