My LEGO®-related Rambles
Winter Court forms the final quarter of my LEGO MIcropolis project, Four Seasons Plaza. You can see videos on the other buildings here:
Spring Heights (Spring), Sunnyside House (Summer), Escher Place (Autumn).
And of course, the end shows you how they all look when put together to form a whole Micropolis Block.
Some bits arrived in the post today, so I was able to complete my next Micropolis MOC in time for it to venture North with me tomorrow.
Whilst I love the Classic Space colours, other themes also have their attractions. The red, white, black and trans neon green of M:Tron is also a good combination, so I thought I would build something in that scheme next. M:Tron Tower is the result.
The 1×2 bricks are easy enough to come by in the right colours, but I had to scour Bricklink for a UK seller who had 4 of the trans neon green canopy pieces printed with the logo, which I wanted to add as a feature to the building. They were a bit slow in sending them, so I was relieved that they arrived today before I go away for a week!
I decided to arrange the bricks in a spiralling pattern to add some interest to the structure. I’m pleased with how it turned out. Having already finished Intergalactic Tower in Classic Space colours, perhaps I will revisit some of the other space themes for inspiration in the future. Watch this SPACE for more ideas and projects coming soon!
Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead:
It seems I was able to cram in one final build before the end of the month. Today I was fiddling with some 1x2x5 bricks (2454) in light aqua, and teamed them up with some 1×2 in transparent neon green bricks – they looked quite funky together. This gave me a tall base to work with. Then I picked out a load of 4×4 bley plates and some transparent red 1×2 bricks, with a handful of other modified bley bricks and set to work.
I like the individual pods at each side of the main structure. I had used a 1×1 modified brick with handle (2921) on some corners, and felt that satellite dishes in trans red could hang off them to give some extra details. As I started adding the upper structure, I imagined they would be apartments, above an office space below. But then I had an idea – perhaps the bottom section could be large TV studios and these upper levels were were the journos had their desks, looking out across the city through rose-tinted glass?
I liked the idea more and more, especially once I had given the outside some pleasant landscaping, manicured hedges and plants.
Then another thought occurred to me – perhaps I could join this new build with another venerable old one – the Flatiron Building – similar to what a certain other National Broadcaster had done with their central London HQ? With much the same back story, clearly MBC had out-grown their original premises, which was mainly equipped for radio, and needed a shiny new development so they could properly expand their Television output to the populace. And so here we have, Old & New Broadcasting House.
This story is purely fictional. Any resemblance to familiar landmarks, living or dead, is completely accidental. No journos were harmed in the making of this module.
Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead:
Micropolis has had a General Hospital and Fire HQ for a while now, so I thought it was about time I built the Central Police Station too. I opted for transparent light blue windows and canopies, some transparent dark blue half-cylinders and white with blue as my colour scheme.
There is a covered walkway to the entrance where a statue of the Police Commissioner stands guard. Once inside the building, access to the upper floor is via one of the two elevators in the darker blue pillars.
The first floor has a commanding view across the city, with a built-in helipad on top. Round the back is the pound for towed vehicles with room for a few patrol cars too. Odds and ends in white and dark bley provided the roof greebles.
The Police work closely in conjunction with their colleagues at Venom Security Inc., so I have decided to site the building just across the road in my layout.
Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead:
A while ago I was messing about with some transparent boat studs (2654) and thought they would make interesting cladding for a Micropolis building. However, the difficulty using them is having to build the walls with plates facing studs-inwards. No the end of the world, but not as easy as studs-out would be.
It’s very straightforward to build square stuff with LEGO, but I also wanted to challenge myself to build something a little different, so I opted for an octagonal shape, mainly due to having an octagonal plate with open centre (6063) in my parts drawers, which I thought could possibly form the basis of the roof structure.
Getting the geometry right to make the plates fit snugly under the roof plate was tricky. I spent ages faffing about with various designs. The sides which were aligned orthogonally with the studs weren’t too difficult, but those on the 45° were proving to be a right pain. Eventually, I came up with this bracket arrangement. It wasn’t terribly stable and required some packing behind (the white plate and magenta tile in the picture) to stop it from wobbling.
The assembly was also quite tall, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to cram in another one lower down for stability. This would be required as otherwise the walls were liable to collapse at every opportunity. It was getting rather frustrating.
Eventually I came up with this internal bracing arrangement, connected in the middle vertically too, in order to stablise things as much as possible.
I got all eight walls up and the roof plate attached. So far so good. But then I put just a little bit too much pressure on one side when I was picking it up and – boom! – it was in pieces again.
Annoyed with myself, I gave up and went to bed.
As is the way with these things, a good night’s sleep brings fresh ideas. I kept the orthogonal pillars the same and reworked the angled versions. These are all held onto the plates via a stepped-off jumper (lime green in the picture) pushed into the hole of a 1×2 Technic brick (blue and bley).
The originals (with yellow bricks) had a decent gap between fixing points at each end of the big red plates. But the stud geometry, and the need to have a jumper plate on top of the diagnonally mounted walls meant they were a little closer together for those (see pillar with pink bricks). However, both versions were still much more stable and less prone to collapse than the first right angle bracket bodge had been. So I pressed on and reworked all four of the pillars for the 45° walls.
Right angled walls were held in place on the floor by being 1 plate lower than the tiles the remaining structure rests on. Diagnonal walls are mounted on an open stud at the bottom. The lowest plate’s middle tube underneath rests snugly in the hole in the round stud.
At the top under the roof, each of the yellow jumpers’ studs key into the single square extra pieces of the octagonal plate – marked in red here.
It’s much easier to see what’s going on from this low angle picture of a half-built structure.
As the roof wasn’t one continuous plate, I decided to put a pillar in the middle too, so it could rest on that if too much pressure was exerted in the wrong place on the roof. Once all the pillars were in place, it required a little bit of jiggling to get them all to line up with the underside of the roof plate, but when they do, it’s all rock solid!
I had proved the structure, but I didn’t want my building having red walls. Also, I didn’t have enough boat studs to cover them all, and what would it be?
In the course of ordering boat studs from Bricklink, I chose four different colours and thought they would look like stained glass windows. With some white versions around the base, I decided this would be a modern place of worship, St. Octavius’ Church. A few days later all the bits arrived and I am pleased with the way it has all come together.
The main entrance is on the corner of the intersection, with a statue outside. Landscaping and flowers around the sides give another splash of colour. I wanted the structure to have a bit of stature too, so I left it on the 12×12 plate it had been designed on, and added white tiles to give a little step up all around the building.
Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead:
I had some transparent yellow 1×2 bricks left over from those I needed for another model, plus some white 1×2 bricks from my Watford PAB haul, and thought they would go well together. I also found some triangular bley plates which became the roof and steered the design of the rest of it – hence the nod to the Greek mathematical genius, I decided to call it Pythagoras Place.
I see it as an office block in my downtown area. While the atrium at the front has huge windows, round the back is a bit more enclosed. But there are some round skylights up top among the solar panels on the roof. These two bespoke tiles (2431pb499) came from the second Women of NASA set which I bought to build the Space Shuttle and Boosters for my Air & Space Museum.
A few long windows at the rear…
Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead: