Dirks World Map

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My mission for a LEGO® World Map was to create an accurate brick-built (and flat) version of our earth combined with a pleasing look and an enjoyable building experience. In short:

A true eye-catcher for display and geography purposes!

The idea for a LEGO® World Map was born at the end of 2015 while searching for a unique piece of art for our living room. With a lot of ideas for research and development I worked on this project in my spare time until the beginning of 2017 - first digitally and afterwards with real LEGO® bricks. After creating an instruction I finally built the whole map together with my kids and made the instructions available on this website starting in 2019. In the course of the next years, I optimized the look and building technique for the map and made an updated version available in 2022.

A very important purpose of a World Map is to provide information about topography. So the World Map is designed as precise as possible in terms of topography. Every 'pixel' (or brick) has been considered manually to get the best possible result.

The size of the map was chosen to serve my display purposes. With the size of a big painting and a landscape orientation the map fits nicely on a large wall. The size additionally allows to see a lot of details on the map.

Considering map projection methods is also essential, when faced with the creation of a map. After reading a lot about the pros and cons of projection methods I finally choose the equirectangular projection, which seems to represent a fair tradeoff between different distortions and also gives a nice landscape-like ratio for display purposes.

Colors can be used to represent multiple informations on a map (altitudes, vegetation, country borders, etc.). I choose to go with altitudes and a nice color scheme known from classic schoolbook atlases and their lovely and timeless look. The World Map also features a relief, so that the information represented with colors can also be experienced in the third dimension.

For display purposes I added an optional multicolor LED strip around the whole map to get a satisfying look. So you can choose between two different frame versions for the World Map - the Classic frame or the LED frame.

A wall mount allows to attach the map to a wall. The World Map is completely brick-built, so no glue or other non-LEGO®-parts are used for the building process or hanging it to your wall (except for two screws).

Decoration features like a hidden treasure within the himalaya and pins to mark favourite spots were added to complete the World Map. It is an ideal item for travellers, as they can mark their visited spots with little pins. You can also add custom printed tiles for information purposes, if you like to.

The instruction files for the World Map include an easy to follow and detailed step-by-step-instruction. The instruction was designed to make the building process as simple and straightforward as possible. You can mainly built the World Map layer by layer.

Instructions for the frame (Classic frame or LED frame) and the wall mount are also included. So you will have a relaxing yet exciting experience creating the World Map brick by brick.

In 2021 LEGO® released the Art Set 31203 World Map. 4 years after the release of my creation they went with a different map approach to not show land elevation but instead create an artistic map with colorful sea details and white land masses.

Compared to the LEGO® Art Set 31203 my World Map is almost twice the size (72 vs. 40 16x16 plates), has a relief, a different ratio (projection method), shows land elevation with colors and has a (optional) lighted frame.

Please note: 

The sets you can buy in this shop are my own creations (MOC's) and no official LEGO® sets. 

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site.