British Cartographer Tom Rook Draws One-of-a-Kind Map of Taipei City

Tom Rook had just graduated from the University of Nottingham with a Degree in Geography when I first starting talking to him about teaching English as a Second Language in Taiwan. It wasn’t long before he arrived in Taiwan and started teaching at his first school in Taipei.

Since December 2010, I’ve run into Tom on several occasions, but it wasn’t until a few short months ago that I found out about Tom’s passion for geography and for cartography. That night he told me that he had spent over a 100 hours drawing a map of Taipei based on Taipei maps that he had acquired and from the photos that he took on his many hikes and bicycle excursions around the city. He visited buildings like Taipei 101 and Sogo to get a birds-eye view of the city. Each section of the city had been squared off on pieces of A4 paper, which he then taped together to create a 1m 49cm by 64 cm map. This was then sent off to be printed.

This was the result:

To get an idea of the scale of this map: Taipei 101, the third tallest building in the world, is 14cm tall.

Tom’s extremely detailed hand-drawn map of Taipei is a labour of love printed on high quality photo paper with a protective coating. It’s also a one-of-a-kind souvenir for map lovers and for anyone who has been to Taiwan or plans on visiting Taiwan.

Needless to say, Tom’s Taipei map has been a huge hit with the Taiwan expat community, but he’s also starting to receive inquiries about his maps from outside of Taiwan.

This is a great souvenir for teachers that want to take home something special from their year abroad! If you’d like your very own map, feel free to contact Tom by email at: taipeimaps@gmail.com