Interior vs exterior

[Off the wall]

The first couple of modular buildings were criticized for lack of any interior detail. Even the GE and PC have been criticized for insufficient interior detail.

After building the PR, I can't help but think Lego took that criticism to heart.

Does anyone think that with the PR there is too much emphasis on the interior and not enough attention to the actual building?

Edited January 5, 2014 by Off the wall

[jimmynick]

I feel that the actual building in the Parisian Restaurant looks fantastic, but it loses some of the size because of the heavy emphasis on interior. That just eats up pieces.

Green Grocer, on the other hand, had a sufficient interior and was much larger than the Parisian Restaurant, but they sold for *about* the same.

[Off the wall]

So far, I think Green Grocer may be the definitive set as to how modulars should look and how piece count should be utilized.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Off the wall

[Stefano]

Interior is great and all, but like some have said, i would like to see that the exterior is a bit of the main focus. For me, the modulars are show models not play models, not that i play with Lego at the moment, I just build it and let it collect dust at the moment -,-

[glendo]

Although i have not bought my PR as yet, I am already a bit concerned about the size of it. I have the expectations that modulars are large, grand buildings. I see hints that the modulars are slowly being shrunk down, and from the pics of the PR it looks like they are reducing the footprint of the building on the baseplate.

in the balance between quantity and quality, i want a bit more quantity than what appears on offer... but i will see when i purchase mine in a few weeks.

[Off the wall]

Although i have not bought my PR as yet, I am already a bit concerned about the size of it. I have the expectations that modulars are large, grand buildings. I see hints that the modulars are slowly being shrunk down, and from the pics of the PR it looks like they are reducing the footprint of the building on the baseplate.

in the balance between quantity and quality, i want a bit more quantity than what appears on offer... but i will see when i purchase mine in a few weeks.

Great point. I think that is a concern shared by several of us. Several of the MOCs being offered by a Canadian seller on ebay are more of what I would expect in a modular building. He wants $800+ for his modular MOCs, but they are beautiful and the size of the building wasn't sacrificed for more interior detail. But, they are expensive.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Off the wall

[Cunctator]

I agree with your comments: the last modulars are losing a bit the "grandeur" of the first sets.

Frankly speaking I prefer more attention to the exterior. I agree with you that the green grocer is still the best in terms of tradeoff interior vs exterior.

[Faefrost]

Although i have not bought my PR as yet, I am already a bit concerned about the size of it. I have the expectations that modulars are large, grand buildings. I see hints that the modulars are slowly being shrunk down, and from the pics of the PR it looks like they are reducing the footprint of the building on the baseplate.

in the balance between quantity and quality, i want a bit more quantity than what appears on offer... but i will see when i purchase mine in a few weeks.

This is kind of proof that Lego can never win. The complaints about the Town Hall were that it was too big. Basically a big empty box. With too much wasted on height and volume, and not enough focus on architectural and interior details. The fans held up the Pet Shop as the better example of how to do it., with its smaller yet deeply detailed presentation. PR reflects that. At this point all I ask is for a new interesting building. Personally I much prefer a well detailed interior. Even if it is just for display. I know its there. But I'm weird that way.

[Off the wall]

I think that Town Hall and Parisian Restaurant are on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as this discussion is concerned. I would prefer a middle ground, somewhere around the Green Grocer. With that said, it's like the Crane brothers said on Frasier. Their favorite evening was a night out where everything was perfect, except for one minor little detail that they could then pick apart all night. :-)

[Rob Klingberg]

What exactly do people find to quarrel about with regard to the PR exterior? I found its complexity amazing-- the roof cornices, the other front elements, and the rear patio consume hundreds of parts. I heartily disagree that LEGO put too much emphasis on the interior vs. exterior. While the PR does have a nice interior, how many parts are actually consumed in the interior? There are a total of 2,469 parts in the PR. A quick glance through the three instruction books produces a manual count of 291 interior parts for the first floor, 84 interior parts for the second floor, and 48 interior parts for the 3rd floor-- including floor tiles. That's a total of 423 interior parts, or just 17.1% of the total part count-- for three furnished floors. I hardly think that represents an out-of-balance situation. I think those who have not built the kit may not yet appreciate the level of intricacy on all fronts in the kit-- the detail and complexity of the external elements far exceeds that in any other Modular, in my opinion. This is another aspect of the kit that makes it so ideal-- it has a high part count while simultaneously achieving a balance of detail (interior and exterior) not seen in any other Modular. True, the overall size of the building (its footprint on the baseplate) is smaller than other Modulars, but I'd rather have detail and intricacy than a giant, cavernous, largely empty shell like the Grand Emporium and Town Hall (don't get me wrong-- I like both of these models very much, and yes they do have interiors, but after building the PR, the level of detail pales in comparison and size was clearly favored over detail, both on the outside and inside). The only other Modular that comes close in my opinion to the PR's balance and complexity is the Green Grocer, as others have already mentioned.

--Rob

[Off the wall]

I've built it. I've built all of the others. It's largely a subjective thing and I just don't find the PR to be all that pleasing. Some were critical of the Grand Emporium. I love it. I've bought four of them and created a really Grand Emporium.

[Aanchir]

I think the Parisian Restaurant is gorgeous, inside and out. Lots of fantastic detail on all sides and lots of brilliant new ideas, such as the outdoor staircases — something no previous modular buildings have incorporated.

I'm glad the modular buildings aren't all the same shape and size, to be honest. I think that would make things rather boring. The narrower width of the upper floors breaks up the modulars nicely, much as the alley/open-air market in Market Street did way back when. Having all the buildings sit perfectly edge-to-edge starts to look kind of repetitive, I think.

In any case, there have only been two sets since the Town Hall. It's ridiculous to think that two buildings are enough to interpret a trend towards smaller modulars — not without the designers saying anything to suggest that intent. If the models had been getting smaller for four or five installments then there would be more of an argument for a trend.

I find it odd that you consider Green Grocer to be appropriate "middle ground" as far as height is concerned. Before Town Hall, Green Grocer was the set that was often criticized for being an absolute behemoth relative to the other modular buildings, particularly the Fire Brigade and Pet Shop.

[Off the wall]

Well, like it said its largely subjective. However, I do admire your passion for the subject. I can't get all that worked up about it. Compared to criminal defendants, lego is a nice change of pace. Never had a minifig pull a gun on me. Everything is good......

[eurotrash]

Never had a minifig pull a gun on me.

I must be hanging around the wrong kind of minifigs then...

As for the Interior/Exterior debate. I want to see interesting facades and interesting interiors. I take Rob's point about the percentage of interior pieces - I don't think they're overdoing the interior at the expense of the exterior and I certainly don't expect to be paying modular prices for an empty shell.

More interiors please!

[Wodanis]

I think the line of modular buildings are very much improving. I would say though we all have to keep in mind the purpose of each building and the designers who build the kit. The Parisian Restaurant wouldn't be big in scale but would be lavish on detail. Whereas the town hall is big as city halls usually are. The Green Grocer was the real start of the modular line with a detailed exterior and interior. I just spent the afternoon designing a Cafe Corner interior for the first floor so I'm glad the others have much more detailed interiors. On the other hand that is what MOC'ing is for. :)

I don't think the modular buildings will keep shrinking. It solely depends on the purpose of the building. The next one will likely be a government/civic building so I would presume it will be larger than the PR.

[Roger_Smith]

What's important to me is how a building looks and feels, and how much fun I have building it. I already love the exterior and interior PR just from the pictures and you can tell there's a lot of details and some interesting building techniques used. I honestly couldn't care less wether one modular looks a bit bigger or smaller in size than another even though it has rouhgly the same piece count. I want exterior and interior details and usage of nice building techniques, things that make me go 'wow, cool' both when building and when looking at it. If I wanted big empty boxes, I can just go and pretty much build them myself.

I only built three modulars so far (with Palace Cinema waiting to be opened), and out of the three I had great fun building the Fire Brigade and Pet Shop. I couldn't really decide which set out of those two I like better, they're both great. My only criticism is that the interior of the red building from Pet Shop is done in a 'just moving in/just renovating'-style, which felt a bit like they were trying to save some pieces.

Grand Emporium, the third modular I have, was quite another story. Neither exterior nor interior have much appeal to me, yet building still could've been fun. The ground floor was ok, though nothing too great, and once you got past that, it morphed into a mindnumbingly boring build. Two walls, a load of dark green windows, some arches with supports, cop-out-interior details, mostly flat roof, done. Meh.

I've been trying to create a more interesting MOC out of it for quite some time now, unfortunately this proves to be quite hard (I'm trying to use only the pieces that came with the set).

Edited January 6, 2014 by Roger_Smith

[sin]

I'll have to reserve opinion regarding PR until it arrives, but I like the trend the modular have been taking. It is a delicate balance and it would be impossible to keep everyone happy. Having said that, these buildings all need to look awesome on the exterior - that is what sets them apart from everything else Lego has released. I have only been into the modular for a little over a year and thus missed out on CC, MS and GG (in the process of buying parts for a GG right now). I have not purchased a TH as it doesn't excite me, I probably will if I can get a decent deal on it but I'm not breathless about it. Of the four modulars I have built - FB, GE, PS and PC I have only been truly underwhelmed by the interior of GE. Having said that I love the look of the building itself and will have some fun modding the second and third floors when I have some spare time. The interior of the PS I thought was fantastic, yes the brownstone has some empty parts but the remainder is very detailed. FB had a decent interior - though nothing to write home about and PC was nice, perhaps a little bit of a step backwards in interior detail but still well appointed. I am very anxious to be able to build GG as it seems to be the benchmark for a lot of people who have built all of the modular line and from what I have read PR is right up there.

[peterab]

I don't yet have a final opinion on the PR since I don't have it, but it appears to have some excellent details. I do have an observation on the size versus detail argument though; I think most builders find it harder to design great details than to increase size, so if LEGO wants to please most people they should probably make future modular buildings heavily detailed, since those who want larger ones can just buy multiple sets to modify.

[*thomas*]

I do not own any modular building, mainly because my main focus is on trains.

But, I've read every review there is on these FANTASTIC creations and I really don't see what their is to complain about. All of the buildings look great and have lots of detail (yes, some more than other) and the realism is as spot on as a set can be. If they would add more interior detail to some of the larger buildings, that would increase the price and you would all be nagging about that... Do not forget, it is LEGO. If you want to add an interior, you can!

The PR looks wonderfull (it is the first I would consider buying myself). It has TONNES of interior and exterior detail and is priced correctly.

Even more, the modulars are the only 'theme' that is aimed at AFOLs that offers quite a few sets, compared to f.i. the 3 trains we have got the last 4 years.

So please people, if you want to complain, dig a bit further until you've actually found something that is worth complaining about.

[TheLegoDr]

I prefer a better exterior with hints of an interior. That way I can either continue the current interior or MOD it more to my liking. The exterior I can MOD as well, but traditionally I have liked how they were finalized, so I don't want to make too many alterations to the exterior.

As far as Green Grocer, I definitely would want to MOD that a little shorter. I understand/respect a varied height roofline, but I don't want jarring height differences like Green Grocer/Town Hall vs Pet Shop/Parisian Restaurant.

But I will be doing my own interiors of the existing Modulars anyway, so if they don't include one, it doesn't really matter much to me. Although (and as great as it looks), the PR does show a highly detailed interior that might be a bit too much, just compared to the rest of the line. I guess it shows the evolution over time of where it was to where it is. It does make you wonder if future releases will also show highly detailed interiors with varied heights/widths to the exterior footprint.

[Herky]

From what I see this is definitely subjective. I was at the Lego Store last night and they finally had a PR built for show. I personally like the big buildings, but I can see how those who like the details would like the PR. Pet Shop for me, since I don't have the GG or CC is about right. I really enjoyed the Fire Brigade as well, but I can see how that could be considered a one off.

I think you have to take into consideration that not every building is going to be perfect for everyone, but I would have liked a bit bigger building on PR. I am not sure what is in it to justify the extra $10 this year, maybe plastic costs more. I think it does have a larger piece count but that is due to details such as the little plant hangers and the spikey "bush" at the bottom of the steps and such. Is it necessary? no probably not...there is a fine line between detail and clutter

As for height, if you look at a lot of buildings out there today, the height is right on when comparing one to another. Green grocer, from the pics I see is taller, but it depends on what it was modeled on...most grocery stores in the US are big, one floor, but other countries do have multiple floors.

I will ultimately pick up the PR but not in a hurry, will wait for 3x points or look online for a sale.

[ShaydDeGrai]

I, for one, enjoy a good building experience and a nice looking model for display when I done. I think a successful model is one that calls itself to your attention from across the room and asks you to take a closer look, and then rewards those who do look closer with more and more details and more and more layers yet to discover. This argues that attention be paid to both the exterior and interior in close to equal measure, but as with all things, there are always trade-offs to be made.

I put the PR together this past weekend and I must say I'm very happy with the choices that drove its design. No kit is perfect - someone else might even consider _my_ favorite kit to the be the weakest in the line, but overall the PR hits most of the right notes for me. It has a really great interior, but I don't feel like either the asking price or the exterior design was somehow compromised to make that interior possible.

My one gripe about the PR design (the fire escape and rear door(s) layout) touches upon the greater issue of scale. The early modulars seemed to take the idea of modular to heart. They weren't just buildings that you could pin together to form a city block, they were designed to mirror and stack so you buy multiples of the same kit and build a really huge (but architecturally consistent) Grand Emporium (for example). I suppose one could say that you can still do that with the Chinese Theatre or PR but really the middle floor is the only one that directly replicates and (at least by my recollection) it's also the stage of the build that typically has the least number of parts. Doing the vertical extension thing for these kits is like buy a half dozen copies of the Emerald Night just to get a few extra passenger cars and parting out the engines.

Even if you do extend the height by adding extra "middle" floors, the floor plans don't make sense. I really like the PR, but would you want to live in an apartment where the guy above you has to cut through your living room to get to his back door? It seems like this aspect of "modularity" is falling by the wayside, favoring an "interesting" build over a scalable one. If this is the direction they want to take with the line I'd be okay with that so long as the builds and buildings were truly interesting in the end but the current, non-committal execution ("yeah, there a door there if you want to buy another whole kit just to make this a little taller…") as illustrated in the exterior design of the PR seems a bit awkward at the moment.

[Aanchir]

My one gripe about the PR design (the fire escape and rear door(s) layout) touches upon the greater issue of scale. The early modulars seemed to take the idea of modular to heart. They weren't just buildings that you could pin together to form a city block, they were designed to mirror and stack so you buy multiples of the same kit and build a really huge (but architecturally consistent) Grand Emporium (for example). I suppose one could say that you can still do that with the Chinese Theatre or PR but really the middle floor is the only one that directly replicates and (at least by my recollection) it's also the stage of the build that typically has the least number of parts. Doing the vertical extension thing for these kits is like buy a half dozen copies of the Emerald Night just to get a few extra passenger cars and parting out the engines.

Even if you do extend the height by adding extra "middle" floors, the floor plans don't make sense. I really like the PR, but would you want to live in an apartment where the guy above you has to cut through your living room to get to his back door? It seems like this aspect of "modularity" is falling by the wayside, favoring an "interesting" build over a scalable one. If this is the direction they want to take with the line I'd be okay with that so long as the builds and buildings were truly interesting in the end but the current, non-committal execution ("yeah, there a door there if you want to buy another whole kit just to make this a little taller…") as illustrated in the exterior design of the PR seems a bit awkward at the moment.

Let's be fair, though. The Green Grocer, the third modular building (second among AFOLs who refuse to include Market Street), had this same problem. Sure, you could theoretically get to the other floors using the fire escape, but that's not what fire escapes are for. They're designed for emergencies, hence why the bottom ladder doesn't reach the ground — it's designed as a way to get down without cutting through the other floors, not up.

And arguably, Green Grocer had it even worse than Parisian Restaurant. In the case of Parisian Restaurant, there might be some merit to the argument that a single family owns the whole building, and maybe rents out the loft. In Green Grocer, though, there were clearly four mailboxes on the bottom floor, suggesting that there are supposed to be at least four independent tenants.

I love Parisian Restaurant's floor plan. It might not entirely make sense without willing suspension of disbelief, a trait it shares with the single set of escalators in the Grand Emporium. But like those escalators or the elevator in Town Hall, the outdoor stair makes the model different, and (in my opinion) refreshingly so.

When you look back, it seems like pretty much every one of the modular buildings has done something new as far as getting from floor to floor is concerned, except Market Street and Palace Cinema. Café Corner had very traditional stairwells. Green Grocer added a fire escape. Fire Brigade had a fireman's pole. Grand Emporium had escalators. Pet Shop had the first spiral staircase. Town Hall had an escalator. And now Parisian Restaurant places its stairs outdoors.

[Herky]

I haven't purchased it yet, but I did get a chance to see a friend's "street" with the PR next to the other modulars...this included Market Street, which I would compare the size of PR to in terms of overall building size and height. To be honest, the PR looks small compared to the other modulars (Pet Shop, Fire Brigade, etc) which, while the PR is definitely a great designed piece, it is hard to look at that on the "street" and think it is a good fit.

No matter which other modular you put it next to, it seems small from what I could tell, it seems to fit the best to the right side of Market Street and then put Pet Shop on the other side so aesthetically, it doesn't look too small. Just my take on this...the interior is definitely cool, but the size is just smaller, especially for the added cost.

[glendo]

OK, I now have seen a PR with my own eyes.

the part count is a scam.

It's a good modular, but sadly I have the impression the designers have started 'cutting corners' or 'trimming size' to reduce the modular. it looks like only 70% of a modular building.

fantastic facade, great detail and quality, but im sad about a couple of issues, but the biggest for me is the the second floor is quite shallow, easily a third less floor space. the all round size of the modular is a smaller building, it seems that they wanted to make the smallest building possible that could sit next to other modulars.

there is a difference in quantity... 2400+ part count, but i bet a substantial amount of these parts are no bigger than 1x3 plates... the PS for example is only around 2000 parts, but im sure most of those parts are larger bricks. the part count for PR is masked with lots of tiny pieces... if you had an unfurnished PR i'd bet it would struggle to hit 2000 parts