You’re looking at one of the largest complete miniature cities in the world. At over 1,000 square feet, this massive scale model of Shanghai covers more ground than many apartments. It’s a projection of what the city will look like in the year 2020, with current buildings and planned buildings standing in this dazzling display. The model is currently in the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum.
The story behind this incredible model of Manhattan is almost as amazing as the model itself. It was built over the course of about 2,000 working hours by software engineer Michael Chesko. He wasn’t building the model in a professional capacity; he was simply having fun. He hand-carved each tiny piece from balsa wood using nothing more than an X-Acto knife, a nail file, and a Dremel. The impressive 1:3200 model now rests in New York’s Skyscraper Museum after being hand-delivered by Chesko and his wife; amazingly, neither had ever set foot in the city before that day.
The Bay Model is one of America’s most well-known models. It doesn’t depict an entire city; rather, it is a scale reproduction of the San Francisco Bay. It was built in 1957 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to give a better understanding of the water flow patterns in the Bay. The model was used in countless scientific experiments until it was decommissioned as a research tool in 2000. It still remains a popular tourist attraction, and it was even used as a tool on the television show Mythbusters.
This Soviet-era model of Moscow is the largest miniature recreation of the city. Covering more than 400 square feet, the model opened in 1977 and is an incredibly detailed representation of the city at that time. Unfortunately, the museum it was in since the 1970s didn’t think it was worth the considerable electricity costs it generated, and in 2006 it offered the entire model for sale, for a modest price of just $3 million.
Source:
WebUrbanist.com
