Luke Trevisan ’24 Completes 3D Scale Model of Belmont Hill Campus

Luke Trevisan ’24 Completes 3D Scale Model of Belmont Hill Campus.

After a full year of work in Belmont Hill’s Makerspace, and summer work at home, Luke Trevisan ’24 recently completed a 3D scale model of the School’s campus. The model mixes 3D printing with traditional model-making techniques. Every piece has been meticulously designed and painted, and the buildings and landscape are for the most part true to scale. The model is now located on the second floor of the Melvoin Academic Center.

“I distinctly remember a late night in the summer of 2021 and right as I was about to fall asleep, I came up with the idea to build a model of the campus,” Luke recalls. By the beginning of the school year, he was ready to start the project.  At the end of last October, he had created an outline. Classmate Chris Brusie '23 helped him get drone footage of the rooftops and upper areas of the buildings. From there, he utilized online maps and resources to find the dimensions of the buildings, starting at a scale of 1ft:1mm. 

“The picture and modeling took me until about the end of March and then I began the process of landscaping with the foam layers,” Luke says. “I first outlined the topography on the board and then cut the foam to fit the slope. By that time exams were coming up, so I set aside the project for the rest of the school year. I then moved the project from the Makerspace to my dining room table at home.” 

The next step was finalizing the landscape and contour of the model, which he did by overlaying paper mache on the foam setup and then filling in any gaps next to the buildings. After that dried, the whole model was ready for the last stage: the detail and color. Luke started with the buildings and laid a base layer of the brick color, and then followed with the individual bricks and then the roof color. He then added the windows and outlined them. 

“The next step was to paint and detail the landscaping,” he explains. “I first painted everything green to make sure I hit all the grass spots. Then I followed up with the other colors like the gray for the walkways, the red for the track, and the dark green for the turf. To put down the model grass, I taped over all the other colors and sprayed glue on the green. Then I covered it with the model grass and blew off any extra. I did the same with the turf but with the rougher grass.” He then added the bushes in each spot where they should be on campus using the fluffy turf. Finally, he mapped out each tree on campus and made sure that they had a relatively accurate height relative to the buildings, and then put up the siding. In the future, he plans on gluing down miniature cars in various spots around campus and hopes to put in a "thank you" plaque along with a brief description of the model.

"Luke did an amazing job with this project,” says Matt Ziff, Director of Makerspace. “He continually impressed throughout the development with his meticulous attention to detail in computer modeling and in landscaping. The patience it took to make every railing and every single step of a staircase was immense. I couldn't be more proud of the work he accomplished."