The City in Time/Space

Maps are good. These maps are great — a staggering set of cartographic/temporal explorations of Manhattan’s urban-sedimentary layers by the architect Brian McGrath for the Skyscraper Museum.

There are four incredible views of the city’s physical growth mapped to historical contexts, all done with Macromedia Flash. But the one you must see is the last, “Perspectival Fly-Through,” which allows you to float through an onion-peeled Manhattan. In its sweeping motion and vectors-on-black aesthetic, this fly-through recalls piloting an X-wing fighter through the trenches of the Death Star in the original Star Wars arcade game.