1 month ago
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Despite never hefting a hammer, Jordan Chen has built Melbourne brick-by-brick.
Over almost a decade, Chen has fused his passions for architecture, infrastructure and video games to recreate the city in the popular building and survival game Minecraft.
His first build was Flinders Street Station as a 15-year-old year nine student in 2016.
In the years since, he’s constructed about 10 per cent of Melbourne in the game, including the Forum Theatre, the Queen Victoria Market, RMIT’s CBD campus (where Chen studied architecture), Melbourne Airport and a long row of skyscrapers on Collins Street.
“I had time when I was in high school, so I started building stuff randomly, and then over the years, I just organised it into a city … and then it just grew out,” said Chen.
He was inspired to recreate Melbourne by his passion for transport infrastructure.
It’s why he’s constructed trains, trams, key Melbourne thoroughfares and even tried his hand at the new Metro Tunnel stations.
“I’ll go out to the city with some friends, or go with family for a bit, and then I’ll get an idea based on that day or see something where I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I should build that,’” he said.
“So then I hop on Google Maps and find the actual location, and then I just keep going from Google Maps back to Minecraft, and then back to Google Maps, just going back and forth, kind of like drawing.”
Because Minecraft is a game comprised of almost entirely cubes, Chen said the hardest parts of Melbourne to recreate are ones with curves and arches, including highway interchanges or domed ceilings.
The longest Chen has spent on a single building is five days, which was the cost of piecing together St Paul’s Cathedral.
“I can’t do it all in one session as much as I’d like to do it one session. So it’s kind of like, I’ve got to do the spires first, or the bottom first, and then that’s a day, and that’s a day, and that’s a day.”
Chen has also tried to capture Melbourne’s cultural essence by building less obvious features like the picturesque inner-city suburbs, trendy cafés, parking signs and hook turns.
Despite the project being in its 10th year, Chen has only recently started sharing to audiences on social media. One clip, a tour of the city, has garnered more than 33,000 likes.
“I feel like it hasn’t hit me yet ... because I’ve been posting it for like, more than six months, and those didn’t blow up as much as this. I guess I’ll just keep posting this and just see what happens.”
Minecraft has more than 141 million active players worldwide. Its 2025 movie generated headlines when it became a ‘meme’ for mostly young audiences who would yell and throw food when the main character said the line: “chicken jockey”.
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