New Zealand

New Zealand sits astride the boundary of the Australian and Pacific plates, and the collision shows. The Southern Alps run almost the entire length of the South Island, a young, actively rising mountain chain that peaks at Aoraki / Mount Cook and drops steeply to the Tasman Sea on one side and the Canterbury Plains on the other. The North Island tells a different story: a volcanic plateau at its centre, the Taupo Volcanic Zone cutting diagonally across it, Taranaki's near-perfect cone standing in isolation to the west. Two islands, same tectonic system, entirely different landscapes.

At this scale the contrast between the two islands is the defining visual, the jagged continuous spine of the South against the broader, more complex topography of the North, separated by the narrow Cook Strait. The surrounding bathymetry reveals the shallow continental shelf New Zealand actually sits on, a remnant of the largely submerged continent geologists now call Zealandia.

Constructed from digital elevation data, with a 2D bathymetric poster underlaying hand-mounted 3D terrain on a rigid 2mm art board.

For anyone from Aotearoa and beyond, who has travelled there, or who is drawn to some of the most dramatic island geography on the planet..

• Scale: 1 : 2 000 000
• Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm / 19.7 x 27.6 inches
• Material: PLA bioplastic relief on premium art board