Joseph McNabb's cities, carved from wood

Fast Company's spectacular gallery of Joseph McNabb tiny (yet unspeakably vast) wooden metropolis looks like a mad, pre-computer age game of Sim City. Interviewed by John Brownlee, the sculptor demonstrates a rigorous science fiction.

The cities McNabb carves do not exist in the real world: they are fantastic cities conjured solely from his own inner world. Nevertheless, McNabb's sculptures are inspired by the activity of real cities, if not their literal architecture. … Given the detail required to create a city skyline from scratch, a single sculpture might take McNabb upwards of three months to complete. His finished sculptures come in numerous forms, including skylines that take up every inch of surface of an entire planet (shades of Coruscant!) or a Niven-esque Ringworld. McNabb has even made a city that defies gravity on the underside of a table, each leg its own towering skyscraper.