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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

2001

  • Work on this object began.

2013

  • Work on this object ended.

2016

2025

  • You found it!

Tangible Earth

This is a Project. It was designed by Takahiro Shinkai, Ryuichi Iwamasa, Shoko Takemura, Kensuke Arakawa, Jun Nishimura and Hideo Shiba and the design director was Shinichi Takemura. It is dated 2001–2013.

Tangible Earth is the first interactive digital globe that dynamically visualizes scientific data. By displaying Earth at a scale of ten million to one, anthropologist and professor Shinichi Takemura’s design aims to give a real sense of our living planet and a better understanding of our environmental and cultural issues. The “public sensory platform” illustrates the unprecedented urbanization and vulnerability of world cities through a series of real-time and simulated climate-hazard visualizations and seismological events, such as sea-level rise, flooding, hurricanes, water scarcity, and a recreation of Japan’s 2011 devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Its dimensions are

50" diameter

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420778999/ |title=Tangible Earth |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=11 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>