Studio

A small studio in Sheffield. One person, public LIDAR, one square kilometre at a time.

What I make

Cityform plates are real geometry, not stylised maps. Every one is a nine-centimetre crop of the actual built environment — terraces, viaducts, embankments, the way roofs step down a hill. The heights come from public LIDAR; the footprints from OpenStreetMap. Both are open data, available under open licences. The hand part is choosing the crop, getting the mesh to sit cleanly on its base, and finishing each plate one at a time.

Process

Four acts: survey, footprints, mesh, object. A scan of the ground from the Environment Agency. Building outlines from OpenStreetMap. Both fused into a single watertight mesh, with water cut down so it reads as river, not pavement. Then printed in white PLA on a Bambu Lab printer, hand-finished, and seated on a graphite base.

The full sequence is animated on the homepage under How a place becomes a shelf object.

Data sources

Two open datasets do the heavy lifting. Both require attribution to travel with every derivative work — listing, footer, in-box card.

Environment Agency LIDAR. Open digital terrain and surface models at one-metre resolution. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

OpenStreetMap. Community-mapped polygons for buildings, roads, water. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under ODbL.

Attribution ships with every order — inside the box on a printed slip, on the listing page, and in the footer of this site.

Lead times & contact

Most cities ship within 7 days of ordering. Each model is hand-finished and packed in its own custom box. UK delivery is free, tracked via Royal Mail.

Don't see your city? Use the Suggest a city block at the bottom of the homepage, or drop a 1 km bounding box in the commission picker.

For anything else, use the message pill in the bottom corner of the page or write to hello@cityform.co.uk.

Common questions

Is it fragile? No. The detail is fine, but the plate is solid PLA on a substantial base — made to live on a shelf, not under glass. Handle it by the base.

Will it fade or warp? Kept indoors at room temperature it stays as printed. PLA softens only at high heat, so avoid a sunny windowsill or a radiator shelf.

Can you print my street? If it's in England, Wales or most of mainland Scotland, yes — drop a 1 km square in the commission picker and I'll print that exact kilometre.

Black base or white? Both ship free — choose on the product page. Graphite is the default and reads as a plinth; white reads lighter and lifts the city forward.