Long Island City has changed fast. Once an industrial expanse of warehouses and taxi depots, its waterfront is now lined with new developments aimed at young professionals who seek luxury amenities and convenient access to Midtown. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of neighbourhood where a well-placed sales model can do serious work.
This is a 24-story condominium tower at 41-05 29th Street, sitting on a triangular plot at the confluence of 29th Street and 41st Avenue in Long Island City, Queens. The design drew inspiration from Manhattan's iconic Flatiron Building — the same wedged footprint, a similarly assertive presence on a corner site. The finished building is clad in warm terracotta panelling with floor-to-ceiling windows and black metal mullions, with 86 condominium units across its 24 floors.
The Brief
We were commissioned to create a sales model of the entire tower — a physical object that could sell the building to buyers before it was finished. The brief called for a 1:75 scale model in white, with frosted windows backlit by switchable LEDs, set on a base showing the adjacent streets and sidewalks, with trees on the plinth. The model needed to ship to the United States.
At 1:75, a 290-foot tower becomes a model just under 1.2 metres tall. That demands precision throughout — and a crate built to survive a transatlantic journey.
The Making
The building is produced entirely in white 3D print, which suits both the brief and the architecture: the tower's clean façade translates naturally into a crisp white maquette. The black window frames and doors are metal-etched, giving the fenestration the sharpness that 3D print alone cannot achieve at this scale. The windows are frosted, and warm LEDs run through the building — switchable from the plinth — so the model can glow or sit in daylight depending on the setting.
The plinth carries a white base with the surrounding road and pavement layout modelled in, grounding the tower in its triangular site. Street trees complete the context, giving the model the sense of a building arrived in a place rather than floating on a surface.
The finished model measures approximately 48 × 30 × 30 inches — height × depth × width — including plinth.
The Delivery
The model was packed into a custom-built crate and shipped to the United States. A sales model has a specific job to do: it needs to make buyers believe in something that doesn't yet fully exist. The tower's triangular form, its Flatiron references, its terracotta warmth — all of that reads in the white model. Lit from within on a sales suite table, it does exactly what it was made to do.
