Buildings, scale 1:25, created by Pinnacle

[Pinnacle]

1.

Hi everyone. I’m new here but I have been building with LEGO-bricks for quite a long time. Hence this short story about my LEGO past. 

The theme, as far as you can call it a theme, what I’m working on is building buildings on a scale of 1:25. Why on that scale? Because it is indeed quite different from the general scale that is now called minifig scale.

That is mainly due to the time I got my first LEGO as a child. That pretty much coincided with the moment LEGO sets were on sale for the first time in The Netherlands. The box I got was one of those boxes in which the bricks were neatly laid  together as chocolates in a chocolates box.

As a child, I found those doors and windows far too small and soon I made these door openings twice as wide and eight bricks high. This made my buildings far more playable.

Later on, I found out that the width to height ratio of this self-made door opening 1:2.4 was, which corresponded reasonable well with real doors in real buildings.

The height of the door was eight layers or 76.8 mm. Compared to the usual door height of 2 meters, that gives a ratio of 1:26. I made it 1:25 because that calculated a bit easier. Due to the limitations that the LEGO-parts give you, you sometimes have to ‘give and take’ when it comes to the exact scale of your MOC.

The second reason of not building in minifig scale is that in those days minifigs simply did not exist. They came into play much later on, in a time I was in my so-called ‘dark ages’.  

 

I am regularly asked why I am not going to build on minifig scale. The only explanation is that I simply can’t handle the length/with ratio of the minifig. Take the height and then the width is not right. Take the width and then de length is not good. Keep the aspect ratio of the minifig and you get a distorted picture of your MOC.

 

Nevertheless, I have seen very great and beautiful buildings and layouts on a minifig scale. Those builders then roughly holds a scale of 1:40. The minifig would in reality be 160 cm high and 64 cm wide. And it is accepted that medieval cottages have a ceiling of 4 meters in height. So, forget the ‘scale’ of minifig scale and look at the creativity of it…

 

Miniland scale would be another alternative. There are some builders who are active on this scale and archive very nice results. The disadvantage is that you quickly have to deal with very large dimensions with buildings other than houses. The costs then will rise very quickly and transport to events will be an insurmountable problem.

By the way, Miniland scale is also taken broadly, and often varies between 1:22 and 1:13, depending on the size of the real building. Easy to calculate if you count the layers of the door height.

In the meantime, I’m so used to my “own” scale of 1:25 that I almost automatically feel whether the proportions are right or not. So, I’m not going to change that scale. I think, it is a good average between minifig scale and miniland scale.

 

Maybe, it is a pity that I cannot use figures on my buildings. Certainly no minifigs. Normally, I don’t think those figurines are that important. But they do bring more liveliness and viewing pleasure, especially for the kids. And it gives a feel for the ratio and size of a building. The only LEGO-figurines that fit in in terms of proportion are the little dolls from the Belville series. With their height of 75 mm, they correspond reasonably to the human size. So that explains the presence of those figurines on some of my buildings on LEGO-events.

Although there are also many visitors who do not recognize the little dolls as LEGO-figurines and sometimes even think that it is Playmobil. Anyway, then there is something to explain…      

[MAB]

LEGO partly covered this in the virtual tour of the LEGO House this morning. They discussed moving from the buildable figures of the 1970s to minifigures, and that a driver for this was the scale. That people could not build houses and cars at the right scale to fit their buildable figures in, without being very large and hence requiring so many bricks. Hence they made much smaller figures that were less customizable in terms of height and body shape but more appropriate to interact with things built for them.

[Erik Leppen]

My first thought was, aren't Technic figures roughly this scale? But I measured one and it's about 9 cm in height, so in 1:25 that would be 2,25 meters, which is not very realistic. They're more like 1:20. Also, an obvious problem with them is that there are no girls.

What about brick-built figures? They're sure recognized as being Lego, but they may not be as "expressive" as specialty figures, and harder to change/pose.

If the proportions of minifigs are off (which I agree!) then maybe friendsfigs (minidolls) are a way out of this. Visually, I personally like those better, however their limited posability is a major downside.

The problem with scale is that if you multiply your scale by a factor x, then areas are multiplied by x-squared (x^2 or x*x) and the amount of space it takes is multplied by x-cubed (x^3, or x*x*x). So twice the size means 4 times the area and 8 times the space. The factor for parts will be somehere between 4 and 8, I presume.

And yes, I can certainly recognize the idea of being "used" to a particular scale.

Will you show a few pictures of some of your builds here?

[Pinnacle]

22 hours ago, MAB said:

LEGO partly covered this in the virtual tour of the LEGO House this morning. They discussed moving from the buildable figures of the 1970s to minifigures, and that a driver for this was the scale. That people could not build houses and cars at the right scale to fit their buildable figures in, without being very large and hence requiring so many bricks. Hence they made much smaller figures that were less customizable in terms of height and body shape but more appropriate to interact with things built for them.

In itself, I don’t think that the minifig scale is the wrong choice of LEGO. Because it is the only way to make layouts with trains and buildings, streets and vehicles, minifigs and cars, within a limited space. And with a reasonable budget. As long as you are not too critical about the scale of things, you can make great and beautiful scenes.

 

21 hours ago, Erik Leppen said:

My first thought was, aren't Technic figures roughly this scale? But I measured one and it's about 9 cm in height, so in 1:25 that would be 2,25 meters, which is not very realistic. They're more like 1:20. Also, an obvious problem with them is that there are no girls.

What about brick-built figures? They're sure recognized as being Lego, but they may not be as "expressive" as specialty figures, and harder to change/pose.

If the proportions of minifigs are off (which I agree!) then maybe friendsfigs (minidolls) are a way out of this. Visually, I personally like those better, however their limited posability is a major downside.

The problem with scale is that if you multiply your scale by a factor x, then areas are multiplied by x-squared (x^2 or x*x) and the amount of space it takes is multplied by x-cubed (x^3, or x*x*x). So twice the size means 4 times the area and 8 times the space. The factor for parts will be somehere between 4 and 8, I presume.

And yes, I can certainly recognize the idea of being "used" to a particular scale.

Will you show a few pictures of some of your builds here?

Of course, I looked at the various LEGO figures by appearance and usability The technic figures were, in my opinion, well, too technical. Too impersonal and as you said, there are no women. And indeed, too big.

Friendsfig is nice to see but they should have been about 75 mm in height. And not too rigid.

In that respect, The Belville series was a pretty good idea. The dolls were flexible and reasonably good in proportions. They could sit, kneel and walk the stairs. They could take all kinds of poses. The big mistake was that Belville was meant only for girls and therefore looked far too fairy-tale. And then, unfortunately, boys don’t want it anymore. I think that’s why a lot of AFOLS don’t like those Belville figures.

As you said, twice the size meant eight times the volume and eight the weight. That is why I do not switch to the 'adult' Belville figures. They are 9.5 mm high, which mean a scale 1:20. And thus an increase of 12.5% in volume. And weight...

Pictures are following soon. But I will do it in more or less chronological order.

.

[Pinnacle]

        

                  

2.

In the previous posting, I had already told how I got to that scale of 1:25 The box of LEGO that I got for my birthday looked something like the picture below. And I loved it. And soon the number of bricks grew rapidly because I put all the pocket money in and used every birthday to extend the pile of LEGO-parts more.

 

 

LEGO hat figured out that children would build houses like the picture below That was fun the first time, but soon got bored. I wanted to make some more details and it had to be a bit more playable. In the meantime, the colours yellow and blue had been added and that gave more possibilities. A little later the slopes were added.

 

 

Well, the first result of my “rebellion” was this little tram house. Perhaps not very impressive but striking because of the stubborn construction scale. Even then in those days, children were not always satisfied with what adults came up with…  

 

Of course, this is a reconstruction. The original was built en demolished more than half a century ago..  

Edited July 11, 2020 by Pinnacle

[MAB]

Yeah, I imagine LEGO picked up on the way kids were playing with the bricks. I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, and I played with LEGO by building houses, buildings, spaceships, etc and then used toys from other brands for figures. Toy soldiers, figures from model railways (maybe 1 inch high), Kenner Star Wars figures, Battlestar Galactica figures, Little Big Man (like action an / GI Joe, but about 8" tall). The range of sizes was huge, but all got played with LEGO. Sometimes the scales were way off, but as I kid I never cared.

 

[Pinnacle]

4 hours ago, MAB said:

Yeah, I imagine LEGO picked up on the way kids were playing with the bricks. I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, and I played with LEGO by building houses, buildings, spaceships, etc and then used toys from other brands for figures. Toy soldiers, figures from model railways (maybe 1 inch high), Kenner Star Wars figures, Battlestar Galactica figures, Little Big Man (like action an / GI Joe, but about 8" tall). The range of sizes was huge, but all got played with LEGO. Sometimes the scales were way off, but as I kid I never cared.

 

Pretty much the same for me, LEGO was a toy like other toys and I played with it in combination with other toys. No problem at all. I didn't have many figurines but some cars from another brand that was on about 1:25. I didn't know about scales when I was a kid, of course, but it inspired me to build on that scale with my LEGO-bricks. LEGO had in the days of my childhood no typical sets, so you had to use your own imagination. I think that is a great advantage. And it should be better for nowadays kids too. 

But LEGO thinks otherwise...  

[Pinnacle]

 3.

Anyway, that tram house grew into small houses and became larger and larger houses.

Until the time came that other things became more important. Interest in LEGO faded away. And when I had to enlist in the military ( it was compulsory that time), the hobby was over. LEGO was mainly seen at that time as a toy and certainly not as a collector’s item. You weren’t supposed to play with toys if you weren’t a child anymore. And so, the now rather large box ended up in the attic.

And then, there was a long time without LEGO, a period now called “The dark ages”

 

 

Here is another picture of one of my last MOC-s, an expression that didn’t exist then either.

It is an original photo, taken in 1964 with a camera I got from my father. An old Agfa isolette 6x6

I wonder if there are more original photo’s as old as this one…

 

[Pinnacle]

4.

Those so-called ‘dark ages’ have indeed endured for quite a long time. But that didn’t mean that the LEGO ended up in the garbage can. I had put all of the LEGO in a big cardboard box and put it in my parent's storage room. It has been there for years. When we had a house of our own, it ended up there in the attic. Then, we moved again and the box stood again in the attic. All in all, the bricks will have been in that box for about 35 years.

At some point, something about 1998, I decided to clean up the attic. And there I came across an old dusted box that I wanted to put it in another place.

I picked up the box and spontaneously the bottom fell out. It turned out to be completely rotten. There I was, with a load of LEGO-parts over my shoes. After saying some swearing words,  my first reaction was to throw away this rubbish. But while I was on my knees doing al the parts in another box, I was started wondering if it might have any value. Luckily, there was internet so it wasn’t that hard to find out.

While searching the internet, I find out that there were more adults who still had LEGO and were building all kinds of creations. Having seen that, instead of selling I became a buyer and started building…

The first building I created after my ‘dark ages’ was a house I had seen during a holiday in York, England. That house was as red and white in real life as the LEGO model. It is still built whit basic bricks only. BrickLink, I discovered later…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Pinnacle

[MAB]

I'm from York, it looks a lot like the "Red House" antique centre on Duncombe Place, near the minster.

[Pinnacle]

14 hours ago, MAB said:

I'm from York, it looks a lot like the "Red House" antique centre on Duncombe Place, near the minster.

That is nice. York is really a beautiful town with many very interesting buildings. We were there in 1998 and stayed in Abbey Park Hotel. Is this hotel still in existence?  

[Pinnacle]

5.

 I found out that there were several real LEGO- associations and I got excited by creating my first building. I signed up immediately. The first day of the meeting I was stunned by all the buildings and other creations. And all the possibilities and all the parts that are added to this construction toy. Luckily, my wife was also enthusiastic and a hobby was reborn.

In the meantime, a lot of colours had been added. So I started replenishing my stock. Black for instance. That wasn’t there in my childhood. And several other colours I came across.

And so I was able to build a house in a different colour. A half-timbered house as can be seen in the pictures. It was the first MOC for the first major LEGO-event.

 

 

 

[Pinnacle]

6.

Brown, orange and yellow. It is not a combination that every LEGO enthusiast will immediately think of when they start creating a building. Still, it is pretty possible. My inspiration arises mainly because that colour combination was so widely used in the masonry at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was the time when the Jugendstil came into fashion.

 

 

Maybe not everyone’s taste but I am happy whit this result.

 

         Later on, I added the towers...

( Photo's are terrible, I know...)

Edited July 16, 2020 by Pinnacle

[Pinnacle]

7.

Blue and white is not a usual colour combination in The Netherlands. But in southern countries it is common use. But even in England they are not afraid of a striking colour.

This was the last building that had to fit on the bottom of  that crate in which I transported my MOC’s to the various events. And that crate fitted exactly in the car we had.

That is why the middle part of the front is a little too small compared to the rest of the house.

Soon we had another car, a little van, so we didn’t need that crate anymore. 

      

 

 

 

 

[Pinnacle]

8.

And now, a more interesting building.

Are there builders who make a drawing before they start building? And how do they do that and what kind of drawing does one work with?

And why should you make a drawing?

The ‘why’ will be different for everyone. Some people just like to draw and work on the computer. Others don’t bother drawing and just start building. Some AFOLS even build first and make a drawing afterwards. Everybody has its own way.

I started drawing when my creations grew a little bigger and more complicated. Then, you don’t want to build and tear it down and start building again. Speaking for myself I want to start properly and with the right dimensions.

The houses I have shown so far have been built without drawing. They are fairly simple and only had to fit on the bottom of the crate.

However, the next project wat slightly larger than the previous houses.

In 2002, I was asked to build a kind of reconstruction of “Havezate Werkeren” , Zwolle, The Netherlands. Havezate means ‘castle’ or ‘mansion’ and Werkeren was the name of the owners of the building. Havezate Werkeren doesn’t exist for quite a time anymore. Only the foundation which was found during excavations for building new houses on that spot.

So, for starting my project I had only some drawings of the foundations and a rather vague painting, painted in 1730. In co-operation with the city archaeologist, I finally build my creation of this former mansion.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Shiva]

I see forward to the next post :)

[Pinnacle]

On 7/27/2020 at 11:24 AM, Shiva said:

I see forward to the next post :)

Thank you. Nice to hear. 

[Pinnacle]

9.

After I had built several houses, it was time for a more significant challenge. After seeing several typical English castles in England during a holiday, I was fascinated by the ingenious constructions that was incorporated into these buildings. So, it would be great to create my own castle. I had managed to collect a nice lot of grey bricks and I could start building the keep, the residential tower of the castle. It was not intended to build an existing fortress. Because if you want to do that, you have to have the necessary drawings and a lot of photos and go back and forth to that particular castle to build it right. And you don’t want to cross the North Sea over and over again…

It is very challenging to design your own castle. You can search for all the interesting details you want to use in your creation and put them in. A very helpful booklet with many photos and drawings was “Castles, their construction and history”, written by Sidney Toy.

Whit the knowledge I got, I started designing my castle with all the collected data. First some pencil sketches and then the first computer drawings.

“Sokenniwell castle” was born.

‘Sokenniwell’ maybe sounds pretty English but is purely a fantasy name, based on a then in The Netherlands well-known expression: “zo ken die wel”,  roughly meaning; “enough is enough” or  “You are exaggerating”, I was often told by my wife when another pile of bricks arrived into our house…

Anyway, The first bricks were laid in early 2002. The intention was to build the castle as “real” and accurately as possible, including the interieur, corridors, stairs, pitfalls, escape tunnels, latrines, chimneys, and so on. And also the correct thickness of the walls. And of course scale 1:25.

 

Walls of medieval English Castles are often exceptionally thick. If it stops at a meter or two in The Netherlands, in England, it is a start. 3 to 4  meter is more common. It depended, of course on the importance of the castle and the financial capacity of the owner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry again for the crappy photos, but I have no other pictures. It will be better later on...

[Pinnacle]

10.

Part two.

The second phase was the construction of the gatehouse. Access to a defence work is always a weak spot, and therefore the utmost care is taken to prevent the enemy from coming in. Usually, a gatehouse consists of two towers with one or more doors between these towers. Often there is also a portcullis, a massive trap fence, which can be operated from a superstructure between the towers. In the floor of this superstructure are holes for throwing stones or hot water on the attackers below. This space between the two towers, the so-called barbican was a real death trap for everyone who had found a way through the first set of doors but failed to open the next doors. Not only for de dangers above their heads but also from loopholes in the surrounding walls, from which arrows could shot.

At the front of the gatehouse, above the doors was a shoot, an opening for pouring water on a fire in case the attacker tries to burn the doors away.

The gatehouse of Sokenniwell is a relatively modest building with two towers, two sets of double doors and a portcullis.

Gatehouses were often almost small castles in themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Pinnacle

[Pinnacle]

11.

A separate detail is the access to the residential tower. To make it as difficult as possible for the enemy, much attention was paid to the security at de entrance to the castle, Every access is a weak spot in the overall defence. Therefore, the entrance gate was often installed on the second floor. A staircase then led to the second floor where there was the great hall or knight’s hall. In the castle, stairs went down to the kitchens, larders, and other storerooms. One corner tower was used as a prison, and the only entrance was outside. The reason was that prisoners never could enter into the castle itself.

The staircase was equipped with galleries on all sides from were attackers could be bombarded with arrows and stones. Sometimes there was also a drawbridge between the stairs and the entrance as an extra defence.

 

 

 

 

[Pinnacle]

12.

The next phase was the construction of the walls and the corner towers. Walls, or curtains, were vital for the defence and were therefore solidly built. The height of an average (English) castle was about 9 meters. But that could be different. The walls of Framlingham Castle, for example, were 13 feet high. Thicknesses were somewhere between two metres (Conisbrough Castle) and six metres (Chepstow Castle. All a bit dependent on the importance of the castle and the wealth of the owner...

 

If the wall was on the planned height, the parapet and battlements were placed. The battlements were about 2.5 meters high so that the defender could stand safely behind it. The parapet between the battlements is about 1 meter.  

At a later stage, these parapets were placed on consoles so that they prootruded over the wall. This created openings in the floor of the wall walk, allowing stones and burning oil to be thrown at the attackers who had come too close to the base of the wall. This construction is also called machicoulis

The corner towers provided extra security for the corners, and one could see from there along the outside of the walls. Often these towers contained the stairs to the weather and served as a shelter for the soldiers.

Sokenniwell Castle also had its walls and corner towers. My design was based on walls that were about 9 meters high and 2.5 meters thick. On a scale of 1:25, that means 40 layers high and 12 studs thick. Something on the thin side for English concepts, but it is only a relatively small castle...

The construction of the LEGO-castle.

The size of the castle is about 3520mm by 2384mm or 440x298 studs. Since the castle also had to be transported, it was built on 12 base plates of 1200x600mm so that 12 separate 'modules' were created. People who have helped me with lifting know that even then it can still get quite out of hand in terms of weight...

In order to make the seams that inevitably were needed, a bit 'natural', I chose to perform those seams as 'cracks' in the walls so that the whole looked a bit like a kind of ruin. In hindsight, that ruin concept would have been better anyway because you could have seen the inside better...

Many castles also had a "back door" through which the owner and his faithful could escape if the castle was conquered   despite everything. This door wasn’t of course just an opening in the wall but a complicated escape route with dead ends, stairs with 'tripways' and niches in which fleeing people could wait for any assailants to attack them.

(I don’t know if “tripway” is a correct English word for “struikeltrap” - Dutch - , but it means that there are some steps with an irregular hight and that can course a nasty dropdown.) 

Later on, tunnels were dug on these escape routes so that people could get away even safer.

A special tower was the East Tower. In this tower an oubliette or a forgetting pit was applied. A forget pit was literally a kind of pit, a cell, four meters high, with only a hatch at the top through which the condemned was let in. Or thrown in if they really hated you. If the hatch was closed, it was utterly dark, and people were literally forgotten. It was a punishment that was usually reserved for the "higher ranks”, who had fallen into disgrace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by Pinnacle

[Shiva]

Not a small castle!

[Pinnacle]

2 hours ago, Shiva said:

Not a small castle!

It depends on how you look at it. For an English castle, it is a medium-sized building. But for a MOC it is indeed hefty. The Keep alone consists roughly 60,000 parts and weighs about 120 kilos. Four men were needed to put it in place on the various events…

[Shiva]

Yep, big MOC :) Nice looking too, of the photos I have seen.

[Pinnacle]

14.

The final phase of this castle was the construction of the castle chapel. Initially, available spaces were used for this purpose, but as castles began to lose their function as defensive work (partly due to the invention of the cannon) and were increasingly transformed into a kind of palaces by the owners, there was also a need to beautify the chapels more and more and make them look like real churches. And if the space inside the walls did not allow it, one did not hesitate to break through the castle wall and extend the chapel outwards.

So too at Sokenniwell Castle. Because the altar with the large window behind it had to be oriented eastward, the east wall was partly broken and the chapel was built on that place.

The chapel has a crypt with vaults under the raised altar. These can be entered with a spiral staircase. This is also all present in this MOC. Likewise, there are the mosaic floor and organ with gallery on the side of the entrance. The altar is baroque style and not common in English churches. But a little artistic freedom is allowed in LEGO-building. Walls with pilasters and buttresses bears the lateral pressure of the barrel vault and roof.

Pinnacles and a bow fries with Gothic-style balusters completed the eaves.

This was the last part of the building added to Sokenniwell Castle and the only part that still exists. In the planning there was a fortified bridge and an outwork. However, due to damage to the castle during transport from an event, this has been cancelled. Moreover, it would have become too large to transport. Except for the chapel, everything has been demolished and the parts are now being used for another extensive project...