I have used some of these large Belville lattice pieces before (see one of my very early videos, Belville Place. But I recently acquired some more in magenta, and decided this time I would use them as girders surrounding a glass skyscraper. So I present Dorsal Heights, the swanky new offices of Magenta Fish Software, an up and comping company who now have their HQ in downtown Micropolis.
MOC: Belville Place
When I first discovered the Micropolis Standard back in November last year, I did lots of research online to see the modules that other folks had built to get some inspiration. The Virtual Micropolis website was a great starting point, along with the Flickr group dedicated to it.
One of the modules which caught my eye was Belville Condominiums by Nathan Stohlmann:
I downloaded the LDD file to see how it was built, and soon after acquired the big pink lattice pieces in a random eBay lot (parts 30016 and 6165 which were both in an old Belivlle set, the Sunshine Home. Belville was a precursor to the Friends line, aimed at girls, hence all the sugar-pink elements). Then I left it as I needed loads of navy blue and trans clear bricks to build the main structure, which I didn’t have.
After my recent haul from Watford, I realised I probably had enough of the trans clear bricks and could use the blue ones instead of navy for my version of the block. But I didn’t want it to be exactly the same as the original, so I did some experimentation with shapes. After a bit of fiddling, I came up with this – with the two ends slightly staggered from the main straight pieces.
I worked on it some more and eventually my 1/2 block of apartments, Belville Place, was finished. I put in on the shelf for a couple of weeks.
A couple of days ago, an eBay lot I had won arrived (see Haul #13 for more info) and that gave me two more pink lattice corners. Bricklink orders which arrived on the same day provided more sand blue 1×2 bricks with groove (4216) and some 1×2 bley grill tiles – I was never quite happy with the black studs showing on the edges of the roof of the 1/2 block.
I set about expanding Belville Place to a whole block, with another small tower on one side and a sunken garden filling up the last 1/4 block. Voila! A very up-market development which will sit right on the waterfront of Micropolis.
It looks very nice from the “rear” view as well:
The sunken garden provides somewhere to relax for the residents, while admiring the sculptures.
Watch the video on this Block by Blockhead: