Lancaster Court was made with pieces from several pick a brick wall visits to LEGO stores around London. It is a block of flats for my Micropolis city, featuring accommodation with balconies and large picture windows.
Sunnyside House – Micropolis Block #38
This is the second quarter of my LEGO Micropolis block, Four Seasons Plaza. Representing Summer, it is called Sunnyside House.
The windows were obtained from a pick a brick trip, and mounted studs-into the building on large white plates. Two sunny side up fried egg yolks complete the roof and some landscaping breaks up the surrounding paving.
Spring Heights – Micropolis Block #37
This is the first quarter of the block which makes up Four Seasons Plaza. It is a development of social housing called Spring Heights, and is based around a spring-themed colours scheme of green headlight bricks for the windows, lime bricks for the walls, white floors and orange accents.
Virtual Micropolis: Octo Mansions
I fired up LDD after making the 3D sketch for this idea, no running out of bricks that way! I kept building until I arrived at a height I liked, which just happened to be 8 floors – so it became Octo Mansions.
A companion block slanting the other way, and some landscaping on the Micropolis base plate and it was done!
I did think about using another colour apart from white, (I had already changed to use smokey trans bricks for the windows instead of clear), but there were few choices which I liked where I the parts needed are available. There are quite a few 1×2 jumpers required which are easy enough, but a matching Brick, Modified 1 x 2 x 1 1/3 with Curved Top (the pesky element which caused me grief with Rainbow Tower) comes in a fairly limited selection – none of which I really wanted to use for the whole model. So white it is.
Virtual Micropolis: Four Square
Having played about with a 3D sketch of each house, I changed over to the virtual world of LDD to see how I could add them to my Micropolis layout. I realised that making each into a small detached dwelling meant I could fit a group of four onto a quarter-block baseplate:
I wanted to give them a bit of colour, but was a little limited in choice with rooves and walls, as some of the more pastel shades I wanted to choose did not give me the bricks I needed!
Adding some landscaping and an alley for rear access gave the module a bit more realism. I know they are rather squashed in, but just like real life, land is at a premium in a big city!
I hope to build these soon, as I would like to have a bit of residential property in my town.