3D print the Canton Tower
A free, printable model of the Canton Tower and the park, water and buildings around it in Guangzhou, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the Canton Tower
The Canton Tower, formally the Guangzhou TV Astronomical and Sightseeing Tower, is a 600 m (2,000 ft) multipurpose tower for observation in Guangzhou's Haizhu District, China. The city's name is also romanized as Canton. Topping out came in 2009, and the tower became operational ahead of the 2010 Asian Games. For a short time it was the world's tallest tower, taking the title from Toronto's CN Tower until the Tokyo Skytree passed it. Until the Shanghai Tower was topped out on August 3, 2013, it was China's tallest structure.
Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit, Dutch architects with Information Based Architecture, designed the tower together with Arup, after the two firms won an international competition in 2004. Groundbreaking took place in 2005. Two ellipses give the tower its form: the lower sits at foundation level and the upper lies on a horizontal plane at 450 m (1,480 ft), and they are rotated relative to each other. The twist creates a waist halfway up, where the lattice grows denser than at the open bottom.
An open-air skywalk in the waist lets visitors climb the tower. Sixteen transparent passenger cars, each 3.2 m (10 ft) across, run along a track around the roof's edge. Media describe the installation as a Ferris wheel, but the cars do not hang from a wheel's rim. At night the tower glows rather than being lit from below, and every lighting node can be controlled individually. Local residents use several nicknames for it, including Slim Waist.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 161 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 201 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 257 mm | 1:2,344 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- An open lattice that pinches in
- The tower is an open lattice that narrows at the waist. Full detail keeps every bar, which suits a larger print or a fine nozzle, while Print friendly adapts the thin bars to the print scale.
- A slim mast on top
- A thin mast rises above the roof ring. Printing slowly with layers of 0.12 to 0.16 mm keeps the mast crisp.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Canton Tower takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The Canton Tower is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a Canton Tower STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The Canton Tower grows with the print: about 161 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
