Sunken Treasure

Minecraft builder and mythological dreamer Vaxor has created his own version of the city in his build “Hyperborea Atlantis”, showing architecture untouched by weather and war, but filled with colourful coral and seaweed.

Just as most storytellers have their own version of how Atlantis came to be, so does Vaxor: “a long time ago, the Ancient Greek people made a city underwater that stood and hid. The Greek people of Atlantis didn’t communicate, because they had it good on their own, and so didn’t evolve anymore. Time stood still for them, and so did their architecture. And they still live in an underwater city, away from the world and its problems, living in peace and living happy.”

“I’ve been to several places in Greece, [where I] saw some inspirational stuff, so I tried making that in to a build,” he tells. Based on this inspiration, Vaxor created his Atlantis by building lots of structures separately, and then combining them to create the city.

But building architecture from real-life models comes with its drawbacks. “I learned that Greek architecture was quite complicated at the time,” says Vaxor, “and used maths as well.” In building his Atlantic paradise, Vaxor had to make sure to stick to the mathematical principles that the Greeks used, as well as facing challenges from his own designs.

But one of the greatest challenges with building an underwater city is, of course, building it underwater. The water in Minecraft is difficult to see through, making it almost impossible to create something on this scale, so Vaxor tried a different route to create a true-to-life sunken city. “This was done by rendering,” he explains, referring to the pictures in which the city appears to be beneath the waves, with the sun filtering through the water. “I rendered the build myself in Cinema4D. This was my first time rendering so it took some tries before I could get a result I was proud of!”

Vaxor is also proud of the size of his Atlantis build – it’s his most ambitious yet, which he admits was a challenge. “Before this build, I mostly did much smaller builds, and for these types of builds you need to really keep going and not give up, which I found sometimes hard not to do.” Although his main goal in building Atlantis was to create a city inspired by Greek architecture, the scale was important to him, too: “I wanted to challenge myself by building bigger and [more] interesting stuff than I did before,” he says, “and I hope I did with this build.”

It’s not the last time Vaxor intends to push himself out of his comfort zone, either. Having tackled organic builds for the first time in Atlantis, he knows what he wants to do next. “Structuring and architectural builds are amazing, and I am certainly working on a project with that too, but for now I want to improve myself with building creatures,” he says. “Time will tell what the theme of it will be!”