Medieval Townhouse with Restaurant & Veterinarian [Modular Building]

[ReplicaOfLife]

Hello everyone,

it's finally time to reveal my latest modular building to you!

This building is inspired by the  leaning, half-timbered houses you can still find in the old, medieval town centres of many cities across central Europe. Being from the town of Esslingen in southern Germany, I've loved these old buildings since I was a young kid, and am in the very lucky position to now actually live in one of them.

The building was inspired by buildings from around my hometown aswell as buildings in other cities, but it is not modeled after a specific building. Instead; I tried to capture the main defining features of this kind of building - namely jettying of the upper floors, a steep, gabled roof, a big window beneath the gable which was used to haul in goods (the uppermost floors were used for storage) and a stone-built ground-floor. The somewhat rich facade decorations are a figment of my imagination, inspired by buildings built or renovated much later.

Some stats:

Piece count: ~3750
Height: 35cm
Features an asian restaurant, a veterinarian and two apartments
Design first started in July 2017, but then I paused for almost three months. After another pause during much of November and December, design was finished at the start of February 2018.

And the best thing:

I put a three storey version of it on Lego Ideas: Please vote for it if you like it!
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/033f7603-82f3-4447-8a4c-64bc92e7ed1f

 

But enough talk, let's get on to the pictures!

The asian restaurant is nicely decorated with dragon murals, an old Samurai sword, themed images on the smoked-glass windows, and old disks inscribed with sacred inscriptions...or so.
The couple enjoys a nice evening here, accompanied by a good wine.

The kitchen is a little bit cramped, retrofitted into an old cellar. Still, enough room to cook delicious meals!

On warmer days, the beautiful, shaded outside seating area is a nice way to escape from the stress of modern times.

The first floor houses the veterinarian's office. First thing up the stairs is the reception counter. The house may be very old, but the furniture and IT equipment here is very modern!

Who would've thought that the dog's skull looked like that under all that fur?

The overhead cabinet contains everything that might be needed.

The second floor houses the first of two apartments.

There's a nice, old armchair with a beautiful old lamp, mainly used for reading.

There's a disused room on this floor, unconnected to the apartment... luckily, the apartments occupant loves all living things, regardless of the number of their legs!

Beneath the steep roof, there is yet another apartment. Deviating from classic modular fashion, the entire facade lifts off together with the roof!

The young man living here loves to play the guitar.

As usual, more pictures are available in the flickr album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131278188@N08/albums/72157666886273808

And again: If you like my MOC; please support the accompanying project on Lego Ideas: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/033f7603-82f3-4447-8a4c-64bc92e7ed1f

 

Hope you enjoyed this,

Tobias

 

[DK_Titan]

Very beautiful medieval building. Both inside and outside.

[peedeejay]

Very different from your previous builds but also really cool! Great proportions and details. I really like the roof and that your build is also using the old „trick“ of having a smaller ground floor with growing upper floors, which you can see everywhere in old towns. The interior details are again spot on!

[koalayummies]

Very pretty! I love brick yellow, new dark red and medium stone grey. That roof is awesome and the construction of the top floor with regards to the sloping roof fitment is really innovative. Also love the close up intimate feel with interior pictures and figures, its like we're inside the building. Excellent old town feel and wonderful MOC.

[Bricked1980]

Very nice indeed. Really like the interior details. Great work!  How did you get your camera inside the building to take such great shots of the inside? I assume it's either a really small camera or you had to partially dismantle the building to take the shots.

[LegoModularFan]

Today is my day! Two great new modulars revealed in one day! What a great looking building you designed! Interestingly, there are some similar things with my first modular (still sketching), it has a medieval feeling too. I really love the idea of separating the sand green building. My favorite part is definitely the roof!

The interior is gorgeous! I’ve rarely seen a better interior, it’s just packed with so many details and all the space is used! Great interior photos too.

1 hour ago, RogerSmith said:

And the best thing:

I put a three storey version of it on Lego Ideas: Please vote for it if you like it!
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/033f7603-82f3-4447-8a4c-64bc92e7ed1f

Indeed, it’s the best thing! I wish we could see modulars in this quality every day on Ideas...

1 hour ago, RogerSmith said:

This image inspired me for a furniture! 

Very well done!

[paupadros]

You are the man! Right up there with the Record Store as your best. As others have mentioned, the roofing and especially the dormers look absolutely awesome. And the sand green fence beign part of the floor killed me. So good! 

18 minutes ago, LegoModularFan said:

Interestingly, there are some similar things with my first modular (still sketching), it has a medieval feeling too.

Eagerly waiting for it. Again, for any design doubts, just ask!

There is just one little thing that looks a little out of place to me: the sand green building. Maybe it lacks more distinguished of a roofline or a more defined wall. It just kind off fades in the distance, to say it someway.

[ReplicaOfLife]

Thanks @DK_Titan !

22 hours ago, peedeejay said:

Very different from your previous builds but also really cool! Great proportions and details. I really like the roof and that your build is also using the old „trick“ of having a smaller ground floor with growing upper floors, which you can see everywhere in old towns. The interior details are again spot on!

Having those overhanging floors was a must. There's some places where you can easily pass each other in small, narrow streets, but up above, the roofs of the buildings almost touch bcause everyone maximized their floor space

22 hours ago, koalayummies said:

Very pretty! I love brick yellow, new dark red and medium stone grey. That roof is awesome and the construction of the top floor with regards to the sloping roof fitment is really innovative. Also love the close up intimate feel with interior pictures and figures, its like we're inside the building. Excellent old town feel and wonderful MOC.

Thanks It's reddish brown, btw, hope I didn't edit those colors to death...though I did very little editing on these pictures, safe for editing out the background on the exterior shots.
I figured out a few MOCs back that doing close-ups with figures in the shot makes for much nicer pictures than just empty buildings. I'm glad you feel the same way!

21 hours ago, Bricked1980 said:

Very nice indeed. Really like the interior details. Great work!  How did you get your camera inside the building to take such great shots of the inside? I assume it's either a really small camera or you had to partially dismantle the building to take the shots.

Yes, I actually dismantled some of it, but only for the pics of the ground floor. You can actually see the studs of the exterior wall on the right of the pic with the couple & waiter inside the restaurant . For the upper floors, I just rested the camera directly upon the walls, sometimes zooming in a bit.

21 hours ago, LegoModularFan said:

Today is my day! Two great new modulars revealed in one day! What a great looking building you designed! Interestingly, there are some similar things with my first modular (still sketching), it has a medieval feeling too. I really love the idea of separating the sand green building. My favorite part is definitely the roof!

The interior is gorgeous! I’ve rarely seen a better interior, it’s just packed with so many details and all the space is used! Great interior photos too.

Indeed, it’s the best thing! I wish we could see modulars in this quality every day on Ideas...

This image inspired me for a furniture! 

Very well done!

Thanks, very glad you like it. Looking forward to seeing your first MOC.

The sand green part is intended to represent a later addition to the building...rather ironically, as now it has that unused room upstairs ;-)

Hope I can gather some support on Ideas, though it will be hard. But ~50 supporters after one and a half days ain't too bad, I think.

Tell all your friends!

20 hours ago, paupadros said:

You are the man! Right up there with the Record Store as your best. As others have mentioned, the roofing and especially the dormers look absolutely awesome. And the sand green fence beign part of the floor killed me. So good! 

Eagerly waiting for it. Again, for any design doubts, just ask!

There is just one little thing that looks a little out of place to me: the sand green building. Maybe it lacks more distinguished of a roofline or a more defined wall. It just kind off fades in the distance, to say it someway.

Thanks!

Originally, I had planned to only make the roof detachable, and have the front and back walls of the upper floor fixed to the floor. That did not work. At all. A funny side-effect of that is that now there's actually an unpictured piece of furniture for the appartment that separates with the roof...

Edited March 20, 2018 by RogerSmith

[Agent 86]

An interesting blend of traditional Asian and European / Medieval elements.

I really like it.

[Nightfall]

Very nice model Tobias, so many great details.

[LegoModularFan]

17 hours ago, RogerSmith said:

Looking forward to seeing your first MOC.

And me finishing 

17 hours ago, RogerSmith said:

Hope I can gather some support on Ideas, though it will be hard. But ~50 supporters after one and a half days ain't too bad, I think.

Tell all your friends!

I don’t understand and will never understand why the people on Ideas don’t vote for the best projects! There are some great under-appreciated expired modulars and some popular/best MOCers have a few projects uploaded. They’re just gorgeous but almost/already expired. At least, there are some very good projects which reached 10 000 supporters. I hope this will be one of the very good projects which reaches to what it deserves! Ok, I’m not going to junk your thread with that so I’m stopping it now. I’ll do my best because this definitely deserves much more support  

P.S. Did you consider uploading your Sideways Building and Outdoor Store on Ideas? 

Edited March 21, 2018 by LegoModularFan

[Bricked1980]

16 hours ago, RogerSmith said:

Yes, I actually dismantled some of it, but only for the pics of the ground floor.

Well it was definitely worth the effort. The pics really make you feel as if you're inside the building.

[ReplicaOfLife]

10 hours ago, LegoModularFan said:

I don’t understand and will never understand why the people on Ideas don’t vote for the best projects! There are some great under-appreciated expired modulars and some popular/best MOCers have a few projects uploaded. They’re just gorgeous but almost/already expired. At least, there are some very good projects which reached 10 000 supporters. I hope this will be one of the very good projects which reaches to what it deserves! Ok, I’m not going to junk your thread with that so I’m stopping it now. I’ll do my best because this definitely deserves much more support  

P.S. Did you consider uploading your Sideways Building and Outdoor Store on Ideas? 

Simple: Gathering that amount of support takes a lot of stamina. You have to promote your project on as many channels as possible for a long time - and you need a big enough following, or at least be very active on those channels for it to really work. Being lucky enough to be selected as staff pick on Ideas may help a lot, too. 

In other words: Unless you are either very active or/and already have four-figure followings on several sites (facebook, flickr, instagram etc.) and promote your project again and again, it just will fade into obscurity.

Since I'm only active on two forums and on flickr, it'll be interesting to see how far I'll get with this. I'm confident that I'll get the additional year for 100 supporters, but above that it's anybody's guess.

 

Yes, I considered putting my other buildings on there, but I'm propably too honest - I respect the 3000 pieces limit Ideas has, and as they are, both vastly exceed that (Outdoor Store 3500, Sideways Building > 4200), and taking out a floor absolutely ruins the proportions in both cases, so that isn't an option, either.

 

[ReplicaOfLife]

How it's done... by Tobias T., auf Flickr

A couple people asked me how the angled floor in the restaurant is done. It's actually very simple, so here's a quick montage to explain it:
The floor is just two plates thick and rests on a couple of tiles, only attached via the studs of the two jumper plates you can see. It is then clamped down by the two-stud-wide exterior walls and the elevated bar area, securing it nicely in place.

[MOMAtteo79]

a lot of nice touches!

[LegoModularFan]

Nice floor design! Many thanks for sharing!