This post offers some inspiration for city builders from real life buildings that look like Minecraft. These homes are chunky and simple, brutalist, modern, with sharp edges, clean lines and definitely no circles or curves! Some may have been built in the game already, while many others await their builder.
Building inspiration can come from anywhere – good photo sources include Google Images, Reddit communities or Telegram channels! One post, link or idea leads to so many others, it’s pretty amazing. Some basic tips for research:
Finding inspiration
- If you have an existing image you like. Use reverse image search on Google to find similar photos at different angles, and get names of unknown buildings.
- Without an image, any search will give millions of results! Try being vague or specific and search relevant keywords until good inspiration comes up. Try searching for things like;
- Locations, e.g. “apartment building in Sydney”
- Colors, shapes, sizes and other features, e.g. “wood and stone building”
- Time periods and architecture styles, e.g. “early modern skyscrapers”
Reddit communities
- Example subreddits to explode for build inspiration /r/
- Imaginary Architecture
- Urban Hell and Evil Buildings
- Lost_Architecture
- City Porn and Architecture Porn (safe for work of course)
- Abandoned
- You can also search on Google and add “site:www.reddit.com” to the end of your search to only see photos from Reddit!
Telegram channels
- Example channels you can join on the Telegram app:
- Trad Pics and Anti Trad Pics
- Architecture_World and Arch_Revival
- Travel_Streets
- RUsthetics
- Join an updated channel listing like “Johnnys World of Channels” to find channels easily, like art and aesthetic channels.
- Experiment with searching different keywords like “design” in Telegram and you might find some relevant channels.
Architecture styles
ABOVE: Here are a few major categories of architecture that never fail to provide blocky inspiration! Bare and monolithic tower blocks are easy to recreate in Minecraft. Minimalist buildings are even easier – just place down a single block and call it micro scale! Other than that, modern (international style) and brutalist architecture has taken over the world.
BELOW: Of course there are millions upon millions of examples of Minecraft-y buildings in real life. These are just some I liked and had saved. In the end, anything can be used as reference, even if it’s not blocky… or not even a building! But whatever your inspiration, best of luck on any (??) projects! Also find a preview of an upcoming build of mine below.
Minecraft buildings
house of soviets building facade krasnodar mirador building nakagin capsules pedro astigarraga
Images: STOCK / PUBLIC