GEORAMA
2015
Architectural model (front view) with projection, expanded PVC slab and larch wood poles, dome diameter: 2.34 m (with Meike S. Gleim)
Animation: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Our perception of the world is connected with the history of its imaging. In the 19th century the most prominent form of imaging the world was the so-called ‘Georama’ or large spherical (globe) panorama. Designed by Charles-Antoine Delanglard, the building took the form of an interior globe. On its interior the earth‘s surface was mapped according to the status of geographic research at the time. Delanglard‘s Georama had a diameter of about 10 meters and stood in Paris from 1825 to 1832. In the 1840s, Paris had a second Georama, while the last Georama was opened in time for the first World Exhibition in London in 1851 and which was finally closed in 1862.
The GEORAMA in the exhibition is modelled on Delanglard’s design but constructed as a geodesic dome. Geodesic dome structures were also popularised in the hippie architecture by Buckminster Fuller’s Biosphère for Expo 67 in Montréal. The interior of one hemisphere serves as a screen for a composite of satellite images of the Earth at night. The images from space are a contemporary version of Delanglard‘s Georama and, with the artificial light – evidence of the colonization of the planet by humans –, also a paradigmatic image of the Anthropocene.