Minecraft Maps / Land Structure

30 St Mary Axe - aka Gherkin

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backslashdotcom's Avatar backslashdotcom
Level 34 : Artisan Architect
11
The Gherkin is a building found in the financial district of London, England. Officially, it is called 30 St Mary Axe, but the locals have given it the nickname "Gherkin" due to the shape of the building. This build that I constructed is inspired by the Gherkin. By following some plans that I found online, my build is only 2 meters wider and 3 meters taller than the original. I was able to match the same number of floors (41). The most notable difference is the structural design on the original building uses a 60 degree angle for the lines. Due to the limitations of minecraft, in order to keep the lines as clean as possible, I used a 45 degree angle. However, this allow me to match the same pattern of two floors per triangle on the exterior of the building. Also, due to the ever contracting circles making up the shape of the building at the upper floors, this made it impossible to continue these lines. Therefore, the top of my building does not match the original at all. I struggled with a decent pattern to the top and I am still not thrilled with my final product. The next biggest departure from the original is that I did not include the triangular air way cut outs that are found on each floor. Since I didn't not include them, I didn't need to worry about rotating the floors 5 degrees each time. That alone would have been a nightmare to implement. The entire structure was built in creative mode without the use of World Edit. I manually built this structure by hand off and on over the course of a month on the Creative server at Mutts World. (creative.muttsworldmine.com - /warp gherkin)

Here are the statistics for the Gherkin:
80204 Dark Grey Wool Blocks
15605 Glass Blocks
6021 Iron Blocks
1163 Glowstone Blocks
1031 Stone Bricks
351 Stone Slabs

Just for fun, I changed all of the glass blocks to be blocks of Lapis. Amazing how it changes and appears more solid when using a opaque block.

Please leave feedback if you can.
Thank you,
Backslashdotcom

UPDATE
I realized not everyone would know what the Gherkin is. So I posted two pictures that are public domain images of the source of my inspiration. Now you can see how much mine differs from the original but yet, you will see the similarities. I also see there are four other Gherkins on Planetminecraft. None of them are to scale like mine.

Video Update:
My stepson made a video of the Gherkin and posted it. Since he put the effort into creating the video, I am including it here. I hope you like it and that you get a better feel of how large this building is.

Server Update:
This structure can be found on creative.muttsworld.com at /warp gherkin
Progress100% complete
Tags

1 Update Logs

Update #1 : by backslashdotcom 07/17/2012 9:00:15 amJul 17th, 2012

Currently in the process of fixing the one glaring problem with this build by making the angles closer to the 60 degrees that they are in real life. I probably will create a new project for it when it gets done. I have included a screen shot to show the proper angle.

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1
08/14/2014 5:16 am
Level 67 : High Grandmaster Architect
jduartemiller
jduartemiller's Avatar
I don't know why i hadn't seen this earlier (may have in image searches). Nice job. I see you are taking a similar approach to what i did in mine with your second version. I think yours is the only other one to show the diagrid. I ran into many problems with it, so i respect someone who has taken and is taking on (with version 2) a very challenging building in minecraft.
1
11/04/2012 7:59 am
Level 12 : Journeyman Crafter
Wyboth
Wyboth's Avatar
Great job!
1
07/18/2012 7:44 am
Level 1 : New Miner
Silent_Cake
Silent_Cake's Avatar
Thats awesome
1
07/17/2012 9:19 am
Level 22 : Expert Architect
Studmuffinsam
Studmuffinsam's Avatar
Not my favorite type of builds but you worked hard to make it. Diamond
1
07/17/2012 9:12 am
Level 11 : Journeyman Caveman
leime
leime's Avatar
so awsome please come online and build in my server:D
ip: mcswaggercraft.tk:25567
plzzzz
1
06/04/2012 2:35 pm
Level 9 : Apprentice Architect
TubeJulianTV
TubeJulianTV's Avatar
Awesome!
1
06/02/2012 11:36 pm
Level 20 : Expert Pokemon
Johnnie
Johnnie's Avatar
u steal it
1
06/03/2012 12:11 am
Level 34 : Artisan Architect
backslashdotcom
backslashdotcom's Avatar
You mean take it from someone else? Nope. You can ask the members of Muttsworld and they will verify that I made this. It took a lot of time and was very difficult to make.
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