NORTHAMPTON — At just 17 years old, Zev Seltzer is building Northampton from the ground up.

But the process requires no heavy machinery — just a lot of time in front of computer screens.

Seltzer, a senior at Northampton High School, began constructing a three-dimensional version of the Paradise City with an educational modification of the popular computer game, MineCraft, as part of a capstone project in spring 2014. Now he’s managing a group of five students who are helping him with the endeavor.

Jeromie Whalen, the high school’s technology teacher, is overseeing the group.

“This is all going on after school, at home, during lunch period,” Whalen said in his classroom while Selzter tapped away at his keyboard, surrounded by three monitors that give him a panoramic view of the virtual city.

Minecraft’s game world consists of 3D objects — mainly cubes — that make up materials such as dirt, stone, trees and water. In the built-to-scale Northampton, each block’s edge equals one meter.

Northampton’s department of sustainability and planning provided Seltzer with several gigabytes of topographical data of the city to complete the work.

The end goal, Whalen explained, is to get as many people as possible involved in the project, from elementary school students to city planners. The final product could be used for “virtual tourism, simulations, history lessons and much more,” Seltzer explained on the project’s website.