Up-side Down ― 2022
Part I

In my graduation project, I initiated a study exploring the profound story of mapmaking & cartography, introducing Up-side Down.

The first part of the project is a bilingual Arabic and English book, featuring three major subjects, the first one explores a brief understanding of the impact of cartography on our lives and its political power, the second part accentuates the north and south’s pre-12th-century history, the Arab Golden Age, studying a number of Islamic maps and manuscripts and revealing how the Arabs used to see the north, and the last section of the book covers the attempts of representing the world on a two-dimensional surface using the map projections, transferring the spherical network of parallels and meridians of the globe into a flat surface, these attempts had various intentions and some of them have deceptively represented the world in order to draw a contrast between religions and races.

The book is a paperback double-sided halves bound together with one part rotated 180° relative to the other (also known as the dos–à–dos binding), serving the script direction of each language, and emphasizing the Up-side Down notion.