NEXAH · Designing Human Orientation in Complex Systems.

One world.Many ways of seeing.Orientation begins between them.

NEXAH develops Orientation as a discipline for navigating complex systems by making bounded representations, their purposes, evidence, limits and relations comparable—without collapsing their differences.

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Mercator

IInformation preserved: Local angles
Small-scale shapes
LInformation lost: True area
True distance at large scale
AArtifacts introduced: Areas inflate toward the poles
Greenland appears oversized
UOutside declared scope: Not suitable for area comparison

Equal Earth

IInformation preserved: Relative area
Overall continental shapes
LInformation lost: True angles
True distances
AArtifacts introduced: Shapes stretch slightly east–west near the edges
UOutside declared scope: Direction
Local measurements

Azimuthal Equidistant

IInformation preserved: Distance from the chosen center
Direction from the center
LInformation lost: True area away from the center
True shape away from the center
AArtifacts introduced: Area distortion increases away from the center
UOutside declared scope: No single center serves every whole-world task

No map is the whole world. Orientation begins by making these differences explicit instead of collapsing them.

Every representation is built for a purpose. Comparing what it preserves, loses, introduces and leaves outside its declared scope makes that purpose—and its limits—visible.

Comparison is not identity. Orientation supports Human judgment; it does not replace it.

The visual study

The Atlas of Atlases

The Atlas of Atlases is a core NEXAH research project and its principal visual study of orientation between maps.

Across six visual fields, it places different cartographic and knowledge languages in relation and asks how representations select, preserve and connect structures. It invites comparison; recurring forms are not treated as physically or mathematically identical.

Explore the Atlas of Atlases