10 Most Incredible Globes: Taking Earth Day Literally

Photo:
Image via Tiscali

Earth Day is not only a time to reflect on the many ways in which we could improve our environment but also a chance to appreciate the beauty of the world we live in. The following ten artistic renditions of our planet demonstrate that how we look at the Earth is up to our imagination.

1. Belgium artist Jan Fabre’s "Globe" (1997) made of bugs:
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Image via Kiwisphere

2. Brick artist Nathan Sawaya’s rendition of the Earth in Lego bricks:
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Image via Brickartist

3. "Eartha," the world's largest revolving and rotating globe, weighing almost 3 tons, at DeLorme headquarters in Yarmouth, ME:

4. A globe many would like to visit at least once in their lifetime: North Cape or Nordkapp, Europe’s most famous northernmost point:
Photo:
Image: Marc Jetzkowitz

5. This author’s all-time favourite hangout, the Unisphere in Flushing Meadow's Corona Park, a beautiful remnant from New York City’s World Fair of 1964/65:
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Image: Magnus Manske

Or how about a globe you can walk into? It is actually a 30-ft bridge covered with a stained-glass dome that has brought more than 10 million visitors to the middle of the earth since 1935. But don’t get confused, it also depicts the world as it was in 1935!

6. A walk-in Earth at the Mapparium in Boston’s Mary Baker Eddy Library:
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Image via Mary Baker Eddy Library

7. Here’s a globe many would love to dig into – the Earth made of chocolate. Created for a United Nations meeting in Switzerland in 2008, that’s one sweet reminder of global warming:
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Image via Excellence Bakery

Hiroshi Matsui, professor at Japan’s Otemae Confectionary College, had the same idea. His students created a 3 m-diameter chocolate globe for a college festival in 2007, using 35,000 coloured chocolate truffles for decoration. Sweet!

Photo:
Image via Tiscali

Landscape architects Tracy Taylor, Lisa Gregg, Jennifer Simokaitis, Jeaneane Quinn and Hoerr Schaudt used 2,000 colourful seed packets for their project, "Be Inspired," in which the Earth grows out of a flower pot. Viewers might indeed feel inspired to get in touch with their inner gardener by growing fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers at home, thus reducing the number of packaged and shipped store-bought produce.

8. "Be Inspired," the Earth made of seed packets at a U.S. Botanical Garden exhibition in Washington, DC:
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Image: Kimberley Faye

And, in a similar vein, "Green Roofs Save Energy"” by Deborah Adams Doering at the same exhibition:
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Image: Kimberly Faye

9. The Earth carved out of wood at an exhibition in Goettingen, Germany:
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Image via Nepalese Society

10. Here’s a lovely homemade globe crafted from a potato; after all, the tuber is called an "apple of the earth" in many languages:
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Image: Ilia Chentsoy

Staying with the do-it-yourself idea, here’s a historical paper globe from 1881 that one can make at home:Photo:
Image via Myweb

So what are you waiting for, get creative this Earth Day!

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