HUDSON RISE HOTEL – Minecraft skyscraper replica

Hudson Rise is a modern mixed use skyscraper planned for Manhattan, New York. The impressive project is yet to break ground around 2025, but its Minecraft counter part now stands in the game! It was built over a few days with World Edit tools, and made as close to the real thing as possible.

This is my third major replica to date! The other two are Tatlin’s Tower and Norwich City Hall, both previously described on the blog. I tried to be accurate, but the back of the tower (seen here: https://imgur.com/a/mDcgabg) is actually imaginary. I couldn’t find any render images of the back, but the front is what matters the most here. And what can I say? It works!

Hudson Rise, Manhattan

Hudson Rise is a proposed mixed-use tower reaching over 200 meters. It will have 20 floors of luxury hotel rooms as well as condos and shops. Its location is by the Hudson river in the Hudson yards, hence the name.

The Minecraft equivalent is 210 blocks high, giving an almost 1 to 1 scale if each block were 1 meter. The base is slim at just 39×39 blocks (possibly slightly slimmer than the original tower). Interiors are blacked out with dark gray wool, and each floor is roughly 3 to 4 blocks in height.

The tower is at its simplest a number of inter secting cuboids. Different volumes cut up and combined. An obvious way to build it would be just that, to outline the shape and fill everything in. Which is exactly what I didn’t do, for the better or worse..!

Making the tower replica

I actually started building from the ground up, and was forced to finish it that way, which worked out fine. I used sandstone and white and cyan glass for the basic structure, and only replaced them with a more proper mix of blocks at the end through World Edit.

For example, sandstone was mixed with wood, and the glass was patterned to show each floor. Other blocks I used were walls, stone slabs, and further wood and terracotta. It’s a fairly simple block palette, though made up for by the sheer scale and complexity of the whole build. We’re talking about a singular building here after all! Pretty impressive stuff.

The tower was built in parts from the ground up, with each major volume being made seperately. These main parts include the lobby, the bulky main part of the tower and roof and terrace areas.

Most of the front facade is glass, so I used different shades of glass to differenciate parts of the tower. Both glass blocks and panes were used to add depth and detail. Towards the end I put leaf and oak bushes as well as simple seating around the tower’s many terraces.

I kept switching back and forth between the build and the official render images for reference. And overall the recreation turned out really well, both as an accurate replica and an impressive, realistic building in Minecraft! Until next time.

Render images: archillier.com