Smart piece of work by Italian architecture magazine Domus. To accompany their latest issue, they’ve released a set of Google Earth links – ‘Hyper Domus’ – which enable you to zoom in to the setting of their articles on Toyo Ito’s Mikimoto Ginza 2 in Tokyo, the Aurland Lookout in Norway, Fuksas’ PalaFuksas in Torino, and their Ryugyong Hotel competition in Pyongyang. You also get to see that fabulously stylish Domus magazine appears to emerge from a large shed in a Milano suburb.

"From the March 2006 issue (Domus 890), readers will be able to take a "virtual guided tour" of the buildings published in Domus thanks to a preconfigured itinerary that can be loaded in Google Earth. This itinerary will take you on a tour of the most recent architectural projects, viewed in context."

At this point, given that the viewable context is somewhat limited, it’s little more than a hugely enjoyable gimmick. There is surely long term potential here though, as the applications develop. Download the .kml file at the Domus site.

In other mapping news, see also this handy Google-mapped set of ‘Seinfeld’ locations. As the ‘Geography of Seinfeld’ site says, "Some address are from the scripts, they may not make perfect sense in a real life." Not that there’s anything wrong with that.