Tuesday, February 8, 2011

My Paper Model City

A large portion of my basement is devoted to a paper model city named "Skyscraper City." It is almost entirely 1/300th scale meaning that an average person would be six millimeters high, or about the size of an ant. The tallest buildings are nearly 8 1/2 feet high or 2500 feet to scale. There are models of several real life buildings, buildings from various versions of Simcity, and hundreds of my own designs. One of the main sites of the city is a scale model of the entire new World Trade Center Complex that I built in 2008. There are about 400 buildings in the city which I have been building since the 5th grade.
My 1/300th scale New World Trade Center Complex. 7 WTC is hidden between the Freedom Tower and "The Pinnacle" apartment building which was completely designed in Adobe Illustrator for a High School computer class. The holes are the sites of the original Twin Towers and the entire Quadrilateral Site is raised about 2", or about 50 feet to scale above the ground.

The Spiral, a 1280 foot building, and yes, the cubic stair pattern goes all the way to the ground, 64 steps in all. The cardboard box is a sliding door frame box and the blue building on the right side of the The Spiral is also completely rendered in Illustrator

My City's version of Times Square. The bright splotches on some of the buildings is glow in the dark paint which looks like lights are on in certain "windows" at night. It just can't be seen in a picture. 

An overview of the a portion of the city. There are several more buildings to the left and right. The multi colored spires are lego towers and the tallest has a base of just 1/2 inch square and has no other supports.
The buildings with visible windows are mostly made in illustrator.