LANDCARPET: Turning Satellite Imagery into Carpets

Florian Pucher loves to get a window seat whenever he flies so he can view the landscape below.  The Austrian architect who now lives in Beijing, China has turned that love into carpeting made from 100% New Zealand wool.  Pucher browses through satellite imagery to select views that will translate well onto carpet.   Together with his design partner,  Sophia Liu Bo, Pucher’s rug series won Elle’s Decoration International Design Aware for best floor covering in 2009.

Each individual rug covers several hectares are features agriculture landscapes, rivers, lakes, roads, and more.  There is a limited run of 88 pieces for each of his series covering Europe, USA, Africa, and The Netherlands.  In addition, Pucher has designed some custom pieces such as this section of Hong Kong that was auctioned off at the Dorotheum in Vienna and sold for over $10,000.  The piece is from a larger collection created by Pucher showing the Kowloon West Coast of Hong-Kong, which is now in the permanent collection in Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture, M+.

Pucher’s process involves selecting a section of a satellite image and then extracting the main features onto a drawing.  His color selection is influenced by each country’s landscape:  “Some countries are very easily recognizable through their methods of farming and that has always intrigued me,” Pucher tells us. “Furthermore as an architect and master planner I constantly get to see and look through site surveys, aerial images and city plans which have further sharpened my eye for distinguishable patterns and different layers.” 

The carpets created from The Netherlands highlight the colorful fields produced by that country’s flower industry.

Carpets showing Africa have more earthy tones.

Visit: Florian Pucher’s site for more about his LANDCARPET series.

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