James McNabb’s Sculpted Wood Cities

A person could spend hours poring over the intricate wooden renderings of urban landscapes in James McNabb’s City Series. Using scrap wood and a band saw, McNabb creates hundreds of architectural shapes — from skyscrapers to single-stories — and assembles them into surprising, compelling formations. City Sphere, a beautiful meditation on urban sprawl, is reminiscent of a sunburst — perfectly sculptural, with a hint of the city’s unruliness. In McNabb’s City Wheel, the hundred-some buildings cascade around a large circle, gradually increasing in size to achieve a radiant balance. And our way of viewing and experiencing the city is completely reversed in City Table, with its smooth, checked top, and the cityscape, with stalactite-like buildings, propping it up.

McNabb’s pieces are so much more than the sum of their parts — but if you’d like a part of your own (or a whole neighborhood or city’s worth of buildings), check out his Kickstarter campaign to expand the series!

Hat tip: Colossal

Can’t get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts with a simple mission: to show off amazing work. Come back on Fridays for more.