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d'Angleterre in Minecraft
d'Angleterre in Minecraft
In 2019 Phillip Kimose began the hobby project of creating d’Angleterre in the gaming platform Minecraft. After more than two years, 2000+ hours and over 7 million online building blocks the hotel universe was ready to be explored.
We are in awe of the impressive attention to detail that is to be discovered in the replica. It is a great pleasure to know that our historic hotel still serves as an inspiration for artists of all kinds – now also in the digital world.
What has been your purpose in building d'Angleterre in Minecraft? And why did you choose our hotel?
I have been playing Minecraft since I was 5 years old. Over time, I realized what interested me about Minecraft. It was a strong interest in architecture and the ability to create something myself while exploring a universe. Due to this interest, I searched YouTube for videos about famous buildings and hotels around the world that had been built in Minecraft. I identified many of these buildings, and I came to the same conclusion about all of them. They lacked a level of detail high enough for one to recognize the building both inside and out, thus providing the right experience of it. And it was here that the idea for my Minecraft project took shape.
Minecraft is about experiences. I started my Minecraft project with the idea of creating the best Minecraft world ever built, with a level of detail high enough for people to recognize the building they explored - inside and out. As I have a great interest in buildings, particularly hotels, I decided to find a hotel that I found unique and beautiful. Therefore, I spent a long time researching online for the hotel that I found most beautiful. The first time I came across d'Angleterre was when I saw a virtual drawing from the hotel's renovation in 2013, and here I decided that this would be my muse.
I began to do deeper research, where I learned more about the hotel's history. I quickly became fascinated by the hotel's popularity among the city's residents and famous people. The hotel is a special place in Copenhagen, where famous people throughout time, from H.C. Andersen to Barack Obama, have set foot. It has been the place for the upper class to meet for parties or a cup of coffee. The hotel has always had a special place among the city's residents and has helped represent the best side of Denmark to international tourism. It is a hotel with many stories behind its walls. This strengthened my vision to build the hotel in a Minecraft universe.
The hotel is like a book with many chapters, which gave me the idea of adding another chapter that would take d'Angleterre into the "modern" world, so to speak.
When I started building d'Angleterre, I didn't expect it to become as extensive a project as it has. I started out with the idea of completing a Minecraft world based on a real hotel. When I had built the entire exterior of the hotel, I was in need of an overview of the hotel's floor plan Therefore, I contacted the hotel's creative director, Alan Evensen, and requested their floor plans to be able to build the hotel from the inside. He was very interested in the project and invited me to the hotel for a tour of the house. This gave me the motivation to say: I will complete this project!
My motto throughout the project was that the world had to be built in the best possible way. A big part of d'Angleterre is also its central location in the city. Therefore, I found it necessary to include the surroundings such as Kongens Nytorv and Nyhavn as well as the nearby buildings such as The Royal Danish Theater and Magasin Du Nord. From there, it was just a matter of building.
How long did it take you to build?
I started my Minecraft project back in 2019. From when I started until it was completed in the summer of 2021, a total of 2 years had passed. In addition, I have used over 2000+ hours to build the world. The world also contains over 7 million building blocks, which I have placed and organized.
Was there a part of the hotel you were particularly excited to build?
For me, the greatest excitement has been to see the entire hotel emerge - to slowly see more and more life in the universe. As I progressed in the process, it has also been amazing to see the development in the project's shape and architecture and the level of detail created in Minecraft, which has not been seen in any other world before. I am particularly proud of that. The best period of the building process was putting the final details on the hotel. It is the detail that creates the finished result.
What do you hope people will get out of exploring the digital hotel?
I built the Minecraft world with the vision that it should be the best Minecraft world ever built. What sets the hotel apart from other Minecraft worlds is that for this one, I converted the real floor plans into Minecraft format. I did this with squared A4 paper, which means that rooms, halls, restaurants, bars, etc. are placed exactly as the hotel is built in the real world.
Minecraft is known as the game where you explore and discover a world. And it has won over 360 million players. With the high level of detail and the massive amount of work I have put into the world, my hope is that guests can recognize the rooms and get some of the same experience as they did when they visited the hotel in real life.
Visit Phillip Kimose's d'Angleterre world in Minecraft here.