Around the World in 80 Builds

MinecraftRepro is a fittingly named creator who takes real-world monuments and recreates them in Minecraft using Chiseled Quartz and Cobblestone. It’s like Minecraft Earth in reverse, sucking the strange sails of the Sydney Opera House or the wonky Leaning Tower of Pisa right into good ol’ vanilla Minecraft. Has science gone too far?

“I take suggestions from fellow builders, followers, family and friends,“ MinecraftRepro tells me. “I am a bit biased towards European monuments, especially from France and the Czech Republic, the country I come from and now live in. My heart leans towards older buildings, though some modern ones are so iconic I cannot not build them!”

His workflow doesn’t take him all over the world, though. In fact, a majority of it is done with references, keeping his carbon footprint small and sleek. “Most of the time, I look for measurements of the real-life building, to have a rough idea about the size. I then eyeball it most of the time, without exact measurement of each part.  

MinecraftRepro use Google Maps 3D view to look at the buildings from all possible angles. It’s a tad more difficult when the building isn’t 3D rendered on Maps, forcing him to look for reference photos with more varied angles. Research pays off!

“I try to have these necessary details, even if it means that the build will not respect the exact dimensions of its real-life counterpart. Most of the time it works and I end up with just a few blocks variation in size. Though I extensively use plugins to help me building, I still hand-build most of the time. Plugins are really useful to create repeating patterns, various shapes, angles etc, within seconds.”

(Not familiar with ‘plugins’? Try this guide to Minecraft building tools.)

I bet the architects of the original buildings wish they'd had such tools to hand. Let's see some more world-famous structures, perfectly preserved by one man at his desk, then rendered for our pleasure!

Beyond buildings, Guillaume also likes to work on scenes, planes, ships, and the sort of miscellaneous Minecrafting that people do when they think no-one’s creeping on their work.

I was particularly taken by two final pieces, the Pointe du Hoc and a board game. The range is remarkable, with one being a recreation of one of the moments that changed the fate of the entire world, and the other one is a board game.