Alumni news

A student at the University of Sussex has painstakingly built and recreated the entire University campus on the famed virtual platform, Minecraft. Minecraft is a community game which allows users to create their own worlds using building blocks. Users often build new worlds, or in some cases, build replicas of places that already exist.  

The University of Sussex Minecraft Society has recreated and constructed campus buildings, including renowned architect Sir Basil Spence’s Falmer House, a Grade 1 listed building, to the recently developed East Slope.  

The idea to create the Sussex campus on Minecraft was initiated by fourth year Computer Science student, Tom Harwood. Tom pulled data from satellite imagery on Google maps, scanning in 125m² of data over 90 times to get it accurately on to Minecraft. 1.42km² of campus was imported into the game, equating to over 100GB of data. A total of 19 million blocks were used to create the campus, which is scaled to the size of the real Sussex campus. It took Tom five days to import all data. 

Tom said: 

“The genius of Sir Basil Spence’s architecture meant that everything was on a grid already, so all of the roads and all of the buildings are perfectly square, which made it technically much easier to import over to Minecraft.” 

While Tom imported the scans, he now has a team of 20 Sussex students behind him who have requested to work on different interiors of the building, each adding their piece to the puzzle. Initially hoping that the building of a digital campus would encourage students to join the Minecraft society by connecting with a shared passion, Tom very much sees this as an ongoing collaborative effort from students, staff, alumni and the wider Sussex community: 

“The aim of the project was to bring the community together with something we all mutually know, Minecraft and our Sussex campus.  

“While it’s something that students have been involved in so far, we hope members of the wider community will check out our work and even contribute to the project. It would be great to see more people get involved and make every part of campus recognisable to those who have studied or visited the university.” 

Tom’s first year at Sussex was during the pandemic and, as the world switched to remote working and learning, he learned everything online. Rebuilding a sense of community post-pandemic is important to Tom and he is pleased to see that people are connecting over Minecraft.  

Prof Kate O’Riordan, Pro Vice Chancellor for Education and Students at the University of Sussex says: 

“It is brilliant to see the Minecraft build of our beautiful campus and to see the ingenuity and commitment of our students leading this.  

“Computer science at the University of Sussex has an amazing history, connected to the invention of the internet in the 1970s. I think the campus architecture must lend itself to digital aesthetics – there was a smaller build of the campus in Second Life in 2008 also led by a computer science graduate.” 

In 2008, users of Second Life could create virtual versions of themselves and visit various locations, including the Sussex campus. It was an opportunity for students to study, work and socialise in virtual reality and was a platform for developing teaching, learning and communication.  

Tom and the team are now working to develop a year-round freshers fair within the Minecraft campus. This will include society stalls and website links with more information about how students can get involved.  

People can view the project via the public Sussex Minecraft Society server or via Instagram: https://discord.gg/XS85cxYmd3/https://www.instagram.com/minesocsussex/ 

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