Bricks for buildings, 1 or 2 stud wide?

[Hrw-Amen]

When I was younger and my father ans I used to make buildings out of LEGO, we would always build the walls using as a standard brick the 2 X 4 brick which is 1 high. This was the standard 'normal' brick.

Nowadys from what I see most walls on MOCS are only made from bricks that are 1 X 4, 1 X 2 and so on and so they only have half the thickness and presumably less strength?

I am wondering why this change over the years,especially as it will no doubt make the structures less strong? Anyone got any thoughts?

[Syn]

When I was younger and my father ans I used to make buildings out of LEGO, we would always build the walls using as a standard brick the 2 X 4 brick which is 1 high. This was the standard 'normal' brick.

Nowadys from what I see most walls on MOCS are only made from bricks that are 1 X 4, 1 X 2 and so on and so they only have half the thickness and presumably less strength?

I am wondering why this change over the years,especially as it will no doubt make the structures less strong? Anyone got any thoughts?

it all depends on how you are building it. The new modular are plenty strong but it incorporates both. it also ties everything in with each other and that gives it more strength. Its all in how you build it. I've got several mocs that I'm working on and they are all strong with just the standard 1xX.

[lightningtiger]

My feeling is the thinner bricks allow more realistic and creative building/designing using modified parts - curves and sloping.

The old 2 stud deep bricks afre still handy in some cases, but I mainly build....or should I say 99% of the time with 1 stud deep bricks.

Brick On !

[LAKAbricks]

I would say, the 1 stud wide bricks have been standard for building houses etc. at least since the first minifigs came in 1978. I don't have a single model where the standard brick 4x2 is the most used brick. But I certainly have built many MOCs myself using the standard brick 4x2. But it was mainly ships, castles, palaces, and the like, and normal city houses just to a smaller extent.

/Laka

[Aanchir]

Part of the reason 1-stud walls are popular is that they allow for more interior space in a building with the same exterior space. Also, a lot of minifigure-scale details like window and door pieces are a single stud thick, so naturally people will often try to match that.

In sets, part of the justification for single-stud-thick walls is that smaller pieces are lighter and take up less space, meaning the set can be cheaper. And that's another reason for single-stud-thick walls in MOCs-- after all, a lot of MOCs are heavily inspired by sets.

[meyerc13]

I think for mini-fig compatible buildings, it becomes a matter of scale. 1 stud is about the equivalent of 35 cm, in real life you'd find most walls are less than 35 cm thick. So even 1 stud wide walls are probably too thick, 2 stud wide most certainly so.

True, 1 stud wide loses some stability, I've built 2 stud wide walls into a building and I could pry the whole building off of the baseplate without losing a brick. But as others have mentioned, you can design enough structural support into a 1 stud wide that it will withstand normal play.

As you can see, I generally prefer 1 stud wide walls for my buildings. However, I have seen buildings that combine both. One example of that is:

I liked this building so much I made my own, although I don't have pictures of my version of it right now. One thing I will say is that this combination is even less structurally sound than a 1 stud wide building, very tricky to do, but it can be done.

[Hoexbroe]

To use 2 studs wide walls is a LUXURY most cannot afford when making minifig-scale buildings.

In terms of strength, it is of no importance, as long as we talk about normal desktop sized MOCs.

At times, when I make a particular big MOC, I might be able to "afford" 2-studs wide walls, but I would certainly NEVER user 2*X bricks, but rather two 1-stud wide bricks in different colour, in order to (for example) make a nicer interior decoration.

Still I use a LOT of 2-stud wide bricks; all kinds of foundations, support (lower and upper) and columns for raising base-levels.

I also use them whenever no interior decoration is necesarry. Not for strength, but for "saving" the (slightly) more usefull 1-wide bricks for other uses.

As a particular use for me, I use them alternating 1-stud and 2-stud bricks when making those huge ship-hulls, which actually consumes huge amounts of bricks...

[Toadtorrent]

I'm no expert...very much a Noob...but if you have Lego Store PAB walls as an option, you can often get more interesting coloured 2x4s (dark red, orange, medium blue, dark green, LBG, etc) than you can 1 wide bricks (white, black). So, for stocking up in bulk outside of BL orders...it can be an option to go 2-wide...at least that's what I'm thinking now after filling a cup with dark red 2x4's.