5 Pointz
A 3D reconstruction of 5 Pointz — the world-famous graffiti mecca in Long Island City, Queens. A pilgrimage site for graffiti writers worldwide, visible from the 7 train on the way into Manhattan, demolished overnight in 2014.
Reconstructed from 480p archival footage sourced on YouTube. The video was upscaled to 4K 60fps using Topaz AI, converted to an image sequence, and processed through Polycam to generate a photogrammetric 3D model — preserving the building and its artwork digitally.
Why This Matters
The Building
5 Pointz was a 200,000-square-foot factory complex in Long Island City, visible from the elevated 7 train. For over a decade it operated as a curated open-air gallery — thousands of artists from around the world painted there. It was a living institution of aerosol art, constantly evolving as new work replaced old.
In November 2013, the building was whitewashed overnight without notice. Demolished in 2014 for luxury condos. A federal jury awarded the artists $6.7 million under the Visual Artists Rights Act — a landmark decision, but one that couldn't restore the art. The building is gone. The art is gone. What remains are photographs, memories, and reconstructions like this one.
Why Preserve It
Street art is ephemeral by nature — weather, new layers of paint, demolition. But 5 Pointz wasn't gradual decay. It was deliberate erasure of a recognized cultural site, faster than any preservation effort could respond to.
Photogrammetry preserves more than appearance — it captures spatial context. How pieces related to the architecture, how they read from the street and the train, how scale and position contributed to impact. This isn't a flat image. It's a dimensional record of a place that no longer exists.
Technical Pipeline
01 — Source & Upscaling
Started with 480p walk-through footage of 5 Pointz from YouTube — roughly 20 years old. Upscaled to 4K 60fps using Topaz Video AI, preserving graffiti detail while eliminating compression artifacts.
02 — Image Extraction
Converted the upscaled video into an image sequence — individual frames as high-res stills. The overlapping coverage from a moving camera gave photogrammetry the data it needed. The dense visual complexity of the graffiti provided excellent feature-tracking points.
03 — 3D Reconstruction
Image sequence uploaded to Polycam for photogrammetric reconstruction — generating a dense point cloud and textured mesh. The resulting model captures the building's surfaces in navigable 3D with enough resolution to identify individual tags and pieces.
04 — Visualization
Rendered from perspectives that replicate iconic views — the street-level approach, the elevated 7 train angle, the aerial view. Animated fly-throughs let you move through the digital building from angles that were physically impossible when it still stood.
Cultural Context
5 Pointz wasn't just a building covered in graffiti. It had a waiting list, a code of respect governing what could be painted over, and a global reputation that drew aerosol artists from every continent. Emerging writers painted alongside legends. Technique was taught. Tradition was maintained.
Its visibility from the 7 train was central to its power. Hundreds of thousands of commuters saw the art every day — a massive, constantly changing exhibition that was part of daily life in Queens. Public art in the most literal sense: unavoidable, democratic, and free.
Its demolition and replacement with luxury condos is part of a broader pattern of cultural displacement in New York City. This reconstruction doesn't reverse that — but it ensures a dimensional record exists. Not just what 5 Pointz looked like, but how it occupied space, how it related to its surroundings, and why its loss means more than one building.
Interactive 3D Scan
Explore the full photogrammetric reconstruction. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, right-click to pan.
The View From the Train
Reconstructed from upscaled YouTube footage — the side of the building as seen from the elevated 7 train, the view hundreds of thousands of commuters saw daily. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.
Upscaled Frames
Before and after — low-resolution archival frames preserved at higher quality through AI upscaling.
Reflection
Growing up in Queens, 5 Pointz was part of the daily landscape — a reminder that creativity could be public, loud, and unapologetically present. Reconstructing it digitally felt like the right use of the tools I'd been building with.
Digital preservation isn't a substitute for the original. But a 3D model can be explored, studied, and shared in ways that photographs alone can't support. It's infinitely better than nothing.
The lesson of 5 Pointz is that you don't always have the luxury of time. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is capture what exists right now, before it's gone.
Tech Stack
Topaz Video AI
AI upscaling of 480p archival YouTube footage to 4K 60fps — dramatically improving texture quality for photogrammetric reconstruction
Polycam
Photogrammetry processing from image sequences — point cloud generation, mesh reconstruction, and texture mapping
Blender
Mesh optimization, polygon reduction, UV refinement, camera animation, and final render output
Archival Video
Walk-through footage from ~20 years ago sourced from YouTube, converted to image sequences for photogrammetric input
