LTA MRT Construction Diorama

A cutaway diorama showing how an MRT line is built beneath a live city street. Each case slices through the ground to reveal the works below: the deep excavation braced by steel strutting, the diaphragm walls, and the bored tunnels running through the soil, while everyday life carries on above with a road, buses, trees and a busy worksite.

How we made it

The whole scene is 3D-printed and finished by hand. We printed the structures, the shoring and strutting, the site machinery and the vehicles, then hand-painted the parts that sell the illusion: the layered soil strata, the raw excavated earth, and the weathering on every crane, truck and cabin.

On top of the print work sits a scenic layer of trees, road markings, streetlights and tiny figures, so the site reads as a living construction zone. Each cutaway is mounted in its own lit acrylic display case, built to be shown.

In the workshop