Tube Warp

How it works

Every station and line of the Underground from TfL’s open data, laid out as a tube map. The layout is generated, not copied: the real geography is pushed through a fisheye around central London, then LOOM, a research tool from the University of Freiburg, straightens it onto horizontals, verticals and 45° diagonals.

Here the map is a sheet of fabric in 3D space, like the rubber-sheet picture of gravity. Each mass you drop sinks the sheet into a well and draws the track around it inwards. The masses attract each other too, so two or more fall into orbit and drag the network with them, and merge if they collide.