Chicago Skyline Bas-Relief

This bas-relief of downtown Chicago was created using 3-dimensional data of all the buildings in the city, and a custom workflow to convert building heights into a relief. It’s an extrememly technical workflow that involves a virtual camera to view the buildings from a perspective and convert them to a heightmap.

Then the heightmap is carved into a sheet of high-density urethane with a large CNC router. It takes about 24 hours of machine time to carve the piece 72″ wide, 36″ tall and 2″ of depth.

A freelance architect/3D modeler poured over all the buildings to make them accurate and up to date, as of 2025.