> he wants every building to be included, but the buildings in NYC are anything but permanent

I think he took creative liberties there. The Twin Towers and One World Trade Center are included; he started the project in ~2004

I might have to visit this exhibit next time I'm in NY. I hope their materials will answer the question of how he dealt with new construction, remodels, and demolitions over his 20 years!

“Normal person with normal job”

This isn’t someone working as a full time artist, this isn’t someone living off a trust fund, this isn’t someone selling their creating for millions for the money laundering. This is just a “man in his shed” with a blue collar job doing something awesome.

It says “anyone can doing something awesome”, you don’t need a fancy upbringing or million dollar backing.

Artist who spent 20 years making a scale model of every building in NYC, makes a living as a truck driver.

Putting him down is your judgement revealing your own biases. Personally, I saw it as a put up. He's not some privileged prick, he's a normal guy!

'Artist' would be more fitting.

There's one of Madrid that also dates to 1830 that is insanely impressive, too:

https://www.madrid.es/UnidadesDescentralizadas/UDCMedios/not...

His last name sounds very close to the German word for boredom (Langeweile), that's kind of funny...

Unfortunately the museum itself is pretty lame. I don't recommend.

A little off topic, but any time I see that word, it reminds me of the first time I read the word “synechdoche”, I wanted to know how to pronounce it and watched a very helpful YouTube video [0] three times before realizing someone had pulled a very funny prank from an earlier, less serious time on YouTube. I laughed and laughed.

[0] https://youtu.be/v-n1vGeVIXo

I was wondering if the scale model would have a smaller scale model at the location of the original model...

20 * 365.25 = 7305 days. Assuming their "near a million buildings" number tracks to somewhere around 950,000, he would have had to build 130 "structures" a day on average.

This is all round and not precise numbers, considering he had to have days where he couldn't build, I'm guessing on the number of structures, and he started in 2004 (22 years ago), accuracy is not possible. But still, even if we fudged it down to 100 structures a day: This is BONKERS.

The man has a prodigious skill at building simple models and painting them. I am incredibly impressed. And I am curious if he did it all alone or if he ever had help from friends/family, even just simple cutting of the balsa wood into simple templated shapes for him to later construct. (To be clear, even if he had help it takes nothing away from how impressive this is)

"A model-maker spent 20 years driving trucks!"

"We overestimate what we can achieve in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a year."

Wow, that is phenomenal. I don't play Minecraft, but my kids do- so I can see them and can appreciate all the work that went into this. Fair play!

Incredible effort… thanks for sharing this!

I’d love to learn more about the technical challenges. For example, how do they handle buildings that aren’t perfectly aligned to the cardinal axes?

Whoa. I admire the time and dedication to both models. However, I can't help but LOVE the minecraft model since it will live on. Now we just need to 3D print the minecraft model :D

Is there a way to visit this online, without having to download and install software locally?

1:1,200 scale vs 1:2,400 scale, or 9,335 square feet vs 1350 square feet.

Both are absolutely incredible. I find the growth in size numbers difficult to really comprehend even though the scale difference is an "easy" * 2. I wish I wasn't so so bad at visualizing things.

His job involved driving every day around the same city he was modeling.

> Why is it relevant...

I'd say the point is "An Ordinary Guy did X". Vs. an engineering genius, or somebody with deep pockets, or a Hollywood special effects model builder, or 3D printer junkie, or whatever.

co-opted? The last paragraph of the article suggests this was quite literally the artist's goal:

> “One of the reasons Joe is so insistent that every single building is here is because he would never want someone to come and see it and not be able to find where they live and see their story,” Sherman tells Artnet.

Its not like they broke into his shop and shared his model with the world before he could, it is currently an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.