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Canton Zürich relief puzzle, seen at an angle
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12 piecesZürich, Switzerland

Canton Zürich

Twelve districts around the lake

▶ Play it online

This is the canton the workshop is in. At this scale the terrain that structures daily life is all legible: the Albis ridge separating the Sihl valley from the lake, the Glatt valley running northeast towards the Rhine, the moraine hills left by the glacier that dug the lake in the first place. Most people who live here have never seen its shape as a whole object.

What a child works out

  • Where the lake came from — a glacier's shape is still in the ground.
  • Districts are drawn around valleys and ridges more often than around towns.
  • Your commute has a topography.
CHF 15.00

A download, to print yourself

  • A .3mf file with the colours already assigned
  • One STL per piece, for any other slicer
  • A print guide with the settings and the order to print in
  • For your own use; the licence is in the download

What you need to print it

  • A build plate that takes 176 × 250 mm: the Bambu Lab A1, P1S and X1C (256 mm) do, the A1 mini (180 mm) does not
  • A multicolour setup such as an AMS, for the colours as designed

Printed it? Got an idea?

Send me photos of your print and I'll add them to this page — or tell me what you'd add, leave out or change on Canton Zürich.

The plate

Pieces
12 pieces
Plate
176 × 250 mm

B5 — the size of a school exercise book.

Scale
1 mm ≈ 305 m

How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.

Vertical exaggeration
× 1.39

Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.

Thickness
8.8 mm
Smallest piece
634 mm²

Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.

Fit
0.35 mm clearance

Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.

Material
PLA, printed in Switzerland

Every named piece

  • Affoltern
  • Andelfingen
  • Bülach
  • Dielsdorf
  • Dietikon
  • Hinwil
  • Horgen
  • Meilen
  • Pfäffikon
  • Uster
  • Winterthur
  • Zürich

Zoom in, zoom out

A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.

Follow the borders — World to continent to country to canton to city district

  1. Level 1
    The World1 mm ≈ 157 km
  2. Level 2
    Europe1 mm ≈ 24.7 km
  3. Level 3
    Switzerland1 mm ≈ 1.5 km
  4. Level 4
    Canton Zürich1 mm ≈ 305 m
  5. Level 5
    Zürich City1 mm ≈ 81 m

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