[MOC] Ocean Drive

[Kristel]

It’s been quite a while since I have designed a modular building - none since 2017 actually, according to the my albums over on Flickr!.  There have been a few ideas, but they never went further than thought bubbles in my head.

Then LEGO Ideas announced the “You’re the final piece” contest to create something that could become the design for a jigsaw puzzle.  Jigsaws are what you will often find me doing when I’m not doing something with LEGO, so I knew I wanted to do something straight away.  Quite a number of ideas came to mind, the first of which was a nature based one that turned out to be a disaster! Nothing more to be said on that one.

Another idea was a set of townhouses.  After playing around with some colour combinations, I settled on the different shades of blue, thinking that it looked like the various colours of the oceans around the world.  And so “Ocean Drive” became my working title before I had even put two bricks together.

The other inspiration was the colourful row houses that you find in parts of London.  Particularly, the style of the windows on the first floor (the middle floor for those who are not Australian!).

Ocean Drive is a busy street, with the kids currently on holidays for the summer.  We have the twin girls being looked after by their grandma, who is about to receive a bunch of flowers from her neighbour.  There’s a young boy playing with his cat, a handyman just finishing a job at number 3 and a teenage girl walking her pug.

The buildings in this street started off as individual facades, each of them representing a 16-wide modular building.  However, I ended up connecting them where there was trim using the 1x8 door rail as they just wouldn’t line up neatly, despite supposedly being the same dimensions!  This also meant that they no longer met the modular building standard.

Anyway, I couldn’t build a building like this and not have it meet the modular standard, so I made one in Dark Turquoise (arguably the most beautiful LEGO colour!).  This is what it looks like as a 16-stud wide modular building:

I then got a bee in my bonnet to do up instructions for the individual townhouse.  You can download them via Rebrickable.

More images available on Flickr.

Hope you like it!

[Jack Sassy]

An amazing look!

 

To me it looks like mix of London (like you said) and San Francisco. Really love these ones and the scenes make them even better.

 

Good job! 

[Feuer Zug]

Well done. The dark turquoise makes for a great looking row house. The subtle color changes in the computer version give a nice impression of a cozy neighborhood.

[Kristel]

10 hours ago, Jack Sassy said:

An amazing look!

 

To me it looks like mix of London (like you said) and San Francisco. Really love these ones and the scenes make them even better.

 

Good job! 

Thanks!  Glad you like it!

 

8 hours ago, Feuer Zug said:

Well done. The dark turquoise makes for a great looking row house. The subtle color changes in the computer version give a nice impression of a cozy neighborhood.

Thanks!  No computer versions though - all are build in real bricks.

[Lyichir]

These are lovely! I love the color choices!

I'm curious, do you think you could make them individual buildings like you had intended and still have them line up properly if you added additional Technic pin connections on the upper sections of the side walls, instead of just at the bottom?

[williejm]

This is beautiful. Glorious, joyous building colours! Well done x

[Kristel]

3 hours ago, Lyichir said:

These are lovely! I love the color choices!

I'm curious, do you think you could make them individual buildings like you had intended and still have them line up properly if you added additional Technic pin connections on the upper sections of the side walls, instead of just at the bottom?

Thanks!  Technic pins at more points as you suggested should work - I didn't even think of that at the time.

 

2 hours ago, williejm said:

This is beautiful. Glorious, joyous building colours! Well done x

Thanks!

[JintaiZ]

Amazing build like always! Great to finally see a new modular from you.

[Kristel]

1 hour ago, JintaiZ said:

Amazing build like always! Great to finally see a new modular from you.

Thanks!  Glad you like it!

[MEH]

This is AWESOME! I love what you did here and I wish I had the bricks to do this. One question: are the buildings facades or real buildings? 

[Kristel]

4 hours ago, MEH said:

This is AWESOME! I love what you did here and I wish I had the bricks to do this. One question: are the buildings facades or real buildings? 

Thanks!  The buildings that are shown in a row are only the facades, but still built in real bricks. The standalone building is also in real bricks.

[Zepher]

This is superb! Love the details in cornices - and I also really like the color scheme! It would definitely work well for a jigsaw, but also just looks really cool - the way that the houses are relatively uniform but still have character from the small differences such as color, lawn decoration, and even just residents, is really really fun!

[Kristel]

2 hours ago, Zepher said:

This is superb! Love the details in cornices - and I also really like the color scheme! It would definitely work well for a jigsaw, but also just looks really cool - the way that the houses are relatively uniform but still have character from the small differences such as color, lawn decoration, and even just residents, is really really fun!

Thanks!

[Vaiman]

Beautiful use of the various shades of blue. (the best colour)

If this was a real place it would be a landmark because of the colour choice alone!

The white details make it look truly gorgeous and fresh. The white bands and windows really tie the whole place together neatly and the amount of detail is júst right :D
I also really love the plants. It really gives life to the scene and breaks it up with the ivy climbing on one of the buildings. The amount of detail is also balanced unusually well for a MOC.

This would indeed make for a cool jigsaw puzzle image with the mix of repetition and uniqueness of each section

Edited July 27, 2021 by Vaiman

[Kristel]

11 hours ago, Vaiman said:

Beautiful use of the various shades of blue. (the best colour)

If this was a real place it would be a landmark because of the colour choice alone!

The white details make it look truly gorgeous and fresh. The white bands and windows really tie the whole place together neatly and the amount of detail is júst right :D
I also really love the plants. It really gives life to the scene and breaks it up with the ivy climbing on one of the buildings. The amount of detail is also balanced unusually well for a MOC.

This would indeed make for a cool jigsaw puzzle image with the mix of repetition and uniqueness of each section

Thanks!  I tried to put what I like too see in a puzzle into the picture and you've pretty much picked up on every aspect of that!

[peedeejay]

Sweet! About time you build some modulars again! ;-)

Thr builds are also a good exampe that LEGO has too many blue colors! ;-)

[Kristel]

On 7/28/2021 at 5:24 PM, peedeejay said:

Sweet! About time you build some modulars again! ;-)

Thr builds are also a good exampe that LEGO has too many blue colors! ;-)

Thanks! 

I didn't even get to sand blue, medium blue or that light blue ...

[caiman0637]

These are some truly beautiful houses, I only wish I could build them myself.

[Kristel]

4 hours ago, caiman0637 said:

These are some truly beautiful houses, I only wish I could build them myself.

Thanks!  The instructions are available to download for free from Rebrickable.

[Redhead1982]

These row houses are a reason TLG made so many blue shades. 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

I love the design of the main door and the architetture of the windows!