A county in stained glass

The question that started it was half a joke. The answer became the front page for a day.

shouldn’t you be making a county out of stained glass or something?
Sep 29, 19:39

So we did. Every parcel became a pane, coloured by its class: the greens of farms, the blues and reds of houses and shops. The streets became the lead between the panes, and the rivers pale aqua glass.

Then: “put a golden trace for the stained glass boundary.” There was no official city line in the files yet, so the first gold line around Paducah was traced from the 13,104 parcels zoned to the city, about 18.5 square miles. The Census boundary replaced it within the hour.

A tall arched window: the county in coloured panes below, downtown Paducah in a round window above — The real county as a cathedral window: every parcel a pane, the river in pale blue, downtown Paducah magnified in the roundel above, the city limits in gold.

A close-up of small coloured panes along a gold line and a band of pale river glass — Walking up to the glass: downtown Paducah’s panes, the gold city line and the river.

A room to stand in

The window went into a stone room, lit from behind, with shafts of light through the dust and colour pooling on the floor. The first version carried about 320 MB of textures. It was beautiful and very heavy on a phone.

the stained glass landed nicely i’d love to navigate around it
Sep 29, 20:10

So the sun was fixed at its best late-afternoon angle, and the window became something to explore: scroll toward any pane and the view re-cuts itself sharp at your screen’s resolution. Hover a pane for its parcel number, address and class; click to pin it and open its public parcel page.

A stone room lit by a large stained-glass window of the county — The room: the county window lighting stone in late-afternoon sun. This picture shows while the page loads.

The front page, for a day

At 21:00 on September 29 the room became mccracken.properties’ front page: a welcome card, “McCracken County, in glass”, one button, Walk up to the window, and fact cards drifting past. Farms are 6% of the parcels and 59% of the land. Paducah holds 38% of the parcels on 8% of the land. The oldest building on the roll went up in 1843. Phones got a lighter mode, and devices without WebGL a still picture.

The next morning its share card went out: the window with the sun swaying behind it in an eight-second loop, and “Paducah / McCracken” set on two lines on the wall.

The stained-glass room with Paducah and McCracken lettered on the wall — The first share card. In iMessage, the sun moved.

On a phone, tilting it moves the sun, so the light shifts while you decide what to tap. Later, the room was cast as 1824 in a two-site story, the past you step out of into the neon future. That journey is chapter 6.

Beautiful, but not the front door

staind glass is beautiful but not great UX
Sep 30, 19:45

By the second evening the landing had moved on, and the room moved to /window. It kept its welcome, lost its “Step into the future” button, and gained two pills at the top left: Back to the Future, to the landing, and Whimsy is Inefficient, to the plain map.

Its facts learned to point. “None of those links do anything,” so now each one lights what it’s about as the camera flies there. Farms flash across the whole county window. Paducah lights only the panes inside its city limits, about 23% of the glass. The 1843 building’s single pane pulses. A fact the window can’t show, like the miles of road, no longer pretends to have a link, and the card has back, pause and next.

Sep 29, 19:39A county out of stained glass.
19:44The gold line around Paducah.
20:07The window opens in a stone room.
20:30Walk up to any pane.
21:00The front page of mccracken.properties.
Sep 30, 08:42A share card where the sun moves.
19:45The room moves to /window.
20:02Facts that light what they’re about.