[MOC] The LEGO Houses of Amsterdam (with free building instructions)

[paupadros]

The LEGO Houses of Amsterdam

I'm doing something a bit different this time!

 

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Instructions:

1. Delft Blue Shop
2. Amsterdam Internet Café
3. Flower Shop
4. Prinsengracht 2
5. Spuistraat 334
6. Prinsengracht 211
7. Singel 2
8. Herengracht 152

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1. Delft Blue Shop

 

2. Amsterdam Internet Café

 

3. Flower Shop

 

4. Prinsengracht 2

 

5. Spuistraat 334

 

6. Prinsengracht 211

 

7. Singel 2

 

8. Herengracht 152

Edited October 24, 2021 by paupadros
new links

[jus1973]

Looking forward to seeing your work.  I wish i had the time to be able to build and share like this

[paupadros]

The first model is out! The Delft Blue Shop!

The Model:

At the start of this project I was very keen on recreating the models we had brought back from a trip to Amsterdam years ago. We brought 7 houses and 3 magnets, which made me believe that I chould choose a couple of them and call it a day. The one I attempted first was  my favourite out of all of them: the Delft Blue Shop. It has a beautiful dark tan façade, speckled with all sorts differently shaped windows, and crowned by a gorgeous bell gable.

 

Inspiration behind it:

In Lego bricks, that proved a little trickier. The number of small windows meant I had to build entire floors on their sides and deal with the geometric issues that that causes. But without a doubt the hardest part was designing the sides of the gable. Using the swirly brick seemed like an obvious choice for this detail. But in microscale, even a compact piece such as this one suddenly is too bulky. On top of that, the only way I could make it work was by placing it upside-down. Placing it upside-down is not the issue, I’ve built entire rooflines upside down before (uhmm). The problem here was that I had no place to anchor the upside-down subassembly. I had to either compromise the façade or the roof. Trust me. I was about to give up, no. Honestly. Literally at the last moment before calling it a day up and settling with a sub-par solution, I thought of the one thing that could save me. The flag piece! It had just the right size to cover the anchor of the subassembly and serve as a roof at the same time. And some miracle it had been moulded in Dark Tan. You cannot believe the relief.

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

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Instructions:

Delft Blue Shop

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Edited September 14, 2021 by paupadros

[paupadros]

The second model is out! The Amsterdam Internet Café!

The Model:

Once having finished the first model, I turned my attention to another model that we had brought from Amsterdam. The second one I attempted first was one that was kind of funny to me. It just looked like two buildings on top of each other. There is the white section which uses the ground and the first floor (probably made from wood) and then it suddenly turns into a tan building with a step gable.

 

Inspiration behind it:

 

Unlike the Delft Blue Shop, this one was not as challenging from a technique point of view. After all, the ground level technique is almost identical than the one I used in the Delft Blue Shop and the step gable is just made from jumper plates (although very effective should I say! ). It's only a bit more technical in the lowermost tan sections. The underside-facing jumper plates look more impressive than it actually is. They're just lying on a plate that is attached to the model with Erling/headlight bricks. The windows on top also use the Erling brick and two plate/brick pillars on their sides attached to the Erling.

 

With the Delft Blue Shop:

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Amsterdam Internet Café

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Edited September 14, 2021 by paupadros

[paupadros]

The third model is out! The Flower Shop!

The Model:

After the first two models were based on sculptures we brought back from Amsterdam, I wanted to build another. Most of the sculptures we took home with use, though, were tan in colour. I had already built one in Dark Tan and another in regular Tan, so I didn't want to repeat myself. I turned my attention to a magnet that had a colour close to Olive Green as the main façade colour.

 

Inspiration behind it:

The toughest part to get right in this one, similarly to the Amsterdam Internet Café, was choosing the details to represent and the ones to cut. Because I had already set the scale, I had to build this to fit with the previous builds. In order for it to work, I had to cut some of the detials. One that I was particularly struggling with was the row of red flowers on the top of the building. I just couldn't get them to look decent in the space I had available. So, I chose to not feature them. Having made this decision, I basically enlarged the white section on top, altering the proportions of the original. This gave me the opportinity to add the yellow flowers to represent the Flower Shop, which was a nice touch.

 

With the previous buildings:

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Flower Shop

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Edited September 16, 2021 by paupadros

[paupadros]

The fourth model is out! Prinsengracht 2!

The Model:

When tackling the fourth model, I wanted to build another sculpture that I owned. There was a bit of an issue though. They either were Tan/Dark Tan which I had already used as main colours for buildings or I just couldn't get to work (admittedly, there were two models that I pitifully failed to recreate in Lego bricks ). So I turned my attention to real houses. These had two major issues comapred to models. Firstly, you can get a sense of space with physical models that you just simply can't get with images online. And secondly, models are already an interpretation of a house (i.e. the superfluous details simply aren't there, so you can just pretty much recreate everything).

Since I was going for a real house, I wanted to go for a house I had seen in dozens of Amsterdam postcards as well as travel guides. A quick seach revealed that it was the townhouse on the corner of Prinsengracht and Brouwersgracht. In real life, this house is a café.

 

Real building:

 

The first thing I had to figure out was how to adapt the format I was using to a corner unit. This proved to be quite easy and soon enough I was building the house itself. In order to get the windows how I wanted them, I had to get a 1x1 brick with a stud on one of the sides to do the corner, which meant losing a brick of façade space. While I could get around that, there are a few details I had to omit, such as the variable window size on the middle floors.

My favourite part of the build is the gable/roof area. Of course, this area is the one that gives the building its flair, so I had to get it right. I took the gable from the Amsterdam Internet Café and adapted it to this building. Tying the roof on the back to finish the building was quite fun and surprisingly tough. The window on the gable is attached with an Erling brick which means that it has a small (1/6 of a brick, I believe) ledge on the back. To make the roof "jump" over that I had to use the slipper and the upside-down slipper which is kind of funky. 

 

With the previous buildings:

 

Hope you like it!

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Prinsengracht 2

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Edited September 16, 2021 by paupadros

[TheLegoDr]

Lovely recreations!

2021 is the year of Amsterdam for me.... I spent waaaay too much time pouring over photos and Google street view to build 6 different real Dutch buildings. Maybe one of these days I'll get pictures and post them on Eurobricks. But I mention it only because I also built Prinsengracht 2!! I know that building well thanks to it being seared into my brain earlier this year.

Your mini creations are spot on. You nailed the shaping/coloring really well. Kudos.

[paupadros]

12 hours ago, TheLegoDr said:

Lovely recreations!

2021 is the year of Amsterdam for me.... I spent waaaay too much time pouring over photos and Google street view to build 6 different real Dutch buildings. Maybe one of these days I'll get pictures and post them on Eurobricks. But I mention it only because I also built Prinsengracht 2!! I know that building well thanks to it being seared into my brain earlier this year.

Your mini creations are spot on. You nailed the shaping/coloring really well. Kudos.

Thank you!

I would love to see your version of Prinsengracht 2! I'm guessing it's in minifig scale?  I wouldn't go as far as to say that I overspent time looking for buildings, but I also did spend my little while looking around and picking what to build.

[paupadros]

The fifth model is out! Spuistraat 334!

The Model:

This model has a bit of a funny background. I started building a ground floor without anything in particular as reference. I basically took the already finished Flower Shop as using the same format, I built the black ground floor you can see here. I liked it quite a bit, so I went on a bit of a scout to find a building to put on top of it. I looked around all the places I had visited in Amsterdam. The tram that went from out hotel to the Central Station stopped at a square called 'Spui'. It always sounded funny to me (don't know why). Looking around, one of the buildings just for some reason screamed 'Amsterdam' to my foreign eye. So I chose that one.

 

Real Building:

 

The original was a corner, but since I had just done one, I chose to omit the side façade entirely. Since I was already modifying quite heavily the reference, I bent it a bit more. Instead of the 3x3 grid of windows, mine has a 2x2. Sure, building the 3x3 grid is definitely possible, but it might end up a bit cluttered. My solution is a lot simpler and more readable. 

I did recreate the gable with a fun use of these Technic pieces for the side bit and a 1x2 Technic brick with a connector hole for the center. Technic really is a good ally for us System builders . I am not a fan of using the same colour scheme from Prinsengracht 2 for this one, but there are only a handful of colours that are realistic for Amsterdam and Medium Nougat + White just happen to be a very common one in the city.

 

With the previous buildings:

 

Hope you like it!

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Spuistraat 334

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Edited September 17, 2021 by paupadros

[paupadros]

The sixth model is out! Prinsengracht 211!

The Model:

After having successfully recreated Prinsengracht 2, I thought that I might have a go at another famous house from the city (funnily enough from the same canal). Building this house was attractive for a couple of reasons. First, the architecture is quite different from any of the previous that I had done as the original was designed as a wearhouse originally (despite it currently being housing). Secondly, it has more floors than any of the others, while it had to fit in a similar height to the previous. Fianlly, and probably, the top reason why I chose it: that triangular gable. I was sure that if I put my mind to it, I could make it work.

 

Real building:

 

The first challenge was the gable. It is triangular and has a white trim. To me, there was only one option in that scale, the 2x2 triangular tile. That's why it dictated the whole design. The colour scheme, for instance. The original quite obviously would translate better to Dark Tan, but that piece is only available in regular Tan, so I had to build to whole thing in Tan. The toughest part was figuring out a way to add that white trim. Nothing really worked in such a crammed space. After many attempts, I came up with a novel use of quite a surprising piece to achieve that. Can you guess what?  This one! If you want to take a full look at how it all connects, go check the instructions or the 3D view.

The rest of the building was basically using the same technique from Delft Blue Shop to achieve the windows (I think I only changed a 1x1 plate for a 1x2 jumper in red to simulate the shutters), and making a very low ground floor to fit all the windows. If you search the original, you'll see how it's a row of a few of these houses side by side. By building a couple of this model, you could definitely achieve that look.

 

With the previous buildings:

 

Hope you like it!

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Prinsengracht 211

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Edited September 21, 2021 by paupadros

[jm00092]

Great simplification keeping volumes and colors. Thanks for sharing

[paupadros]

15 hours ago, jm00092 said:

Great simplification keeping volumes and colors. Thanks for sharing

Thanks a lot!

[paupadros]

The seventh model is out! Singel 2!

The Model:

This building originated from a scout I did on Google Maps to find some cool buildings to recreate. This one sits at the north entrance of Singel, probably the most famous canal in Amsterdam and just has a presence that none of other buildings that I found had. It has a large step gable and a very beautiful combination of brick, white painted wood with details in black. The original is a café called Café Kobalt. I instantly knew I had to recreate it.

 

Real building:

 

One of the first things I realised is that there was no way I could fit that building in the 6-wide format I was doing. I went for 8-wide. Maybe 10-wide would have kept the proportions even better, but the piece count would have tripled the others easily. Because of the extra width, one of the next decisions I made was to make it a straight model instead of the corner unit that it is. I didn't want it to be even wider. The build itself was the toughest in this series and one of the hardest I have ever done. To achieve the details, I had to used SNOT for everything. The ground level (whilst a complete SNOT fest ), is roomy enough a allow for a fairly simple build. The first point of contention were the black windows on the central column of the building. Originally, the brackets were not going to be the windows. They were just temporary as I built the windows and would later on be concealed. The thing is that I tried everything that came to mind, but the space is just too crammed for anything to fit (plus, 5/6 of a brick tall). The only decent solution was the temporary one! So I went with that one!  The second point of contention was the gable. As the bell gable gets smaller, there is less and less room to fit to connections to make it all work. Up on the gable, the connections get very finnicky and borderline unacceptable for my standards. Still, I reckon it's challenging but sturdy enough for me to accept it. Honestly, it's as good as I was going to be able to make it.

 

With the previous buildings:

 

 

Hope you like it!

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Singel 2

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Edited September 22, 2021 by paupadros

[paupadros]

The eighth (and last!) model is out! Herengracht 152!

The Model:

Much like Singel 2, this model originated from a scout on Google Maps. This time, I was looking for a final model that ticked the following boxes: it had to be a corner (I wanted two of the eight models to be corners), it had to be two buildings (I wanted to try my hand at two buildings in a single baseplate) and it had to be colourful (I was tired of building in brown and tan! ). This building ticked all the boxes.

 

Real building:

 

If I had used the same format that I had used for Prinsengracht 2 (the other corner model), there was just no way I could fit the whole thing. So, I went two studs larger on the side with the two façades. This makes it asymetrical, but it causes no real trouble besides that. As for the building itself. It's a SNOT fest again. Because of the narrow 4-wide façades, I had to attach them via the exterior walls and with a bracket core in the inside of each floor of each house. In order for it to fit with the other models in the series, I had to enlarge the black building a smidge. This meant adding the extra floor of windows on the first floor. The consequence of this is that the black building is half-a-plate (1/6 of a brick) off grid vertically . This means that from that point upwards, the two buildings are pretty much independent and can't interact with one another. Oh well. 

As for technqiues, there are fun ones all the way around. The funkiest technique is around the gables. They are upside-down in some areas, attached with nipple bricks, daleks facing forwards... Anyway, a fun mess.

 

With the previous buildings:

 

Hope you like it!

 

You can check out the model in the Mecabricks 3D Viewer. I think it's very interesting to see how things are built and with the 3D viewer you can zoom, hide pieces to see the insides...

 

===================================================

Instructions:

Herengracht 152

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Edited September 23, 2021 by paupadros

[paupadros]

Project completed! Thanks for taking a look at my builds and leaving feedback! 

The link to all of the free instructions on the first post!

Edited September 24, 2021 by paupadros

[TheLegoDr]

Well done! So many tiny details. Incredible.

It makes me almost miss building Dutch buildings haha...almost.

I don't think I could handle that much SNOT in that small of a space, so very clever.

[paupadros]

On 9/24/2021 at 11:22 PM, TheLegoDr said:

Well done! So many tiny details. Incredible.

It makes me almost miss building Dutch buildings haha...almost.

I don't think I could handle that much SNOT in that small of a space, so very clever.

Thank you! After building a few, Dutch buildings can get a bit repetitive. Building that much SNOT in such a crammed area certainly was painful occasionally! 

[Rauy]

I already saw these on Flickr and they're absolutely amazing in their detail and accuracy. A really great project!

[paupadros]

18 hours ago, Rauy said:

I already saw these on Flickr and they're absolutely amazing in their detail and accuracy. A really great project!

Thanks a lot! Getting all the finnicky details was quite challenging as I'm not too used to working in microscale but extremely rewarding. Glad you like it! 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Impressive work ...very cool! 

[paupadros]

On 10/21/2021 at 3:37 AM, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

Impressive work ...very cool! 

Thanks a lot! 

[koalayummies]

This is feaking awesome and amazing of you to share the instructions. Your designs are incredibly classy and true to the inspiration. At this scale one can build a large city with very few and relatively common pieces. Absolutely wonderful! What would typically be behind the buildings in the empty spots?

[paupadros]

11 hours ago, koalayummies said:

This is feaking awesome and amazing of you to share the instructions. Your designs are incredibly classy and true to the inspiration. At this scale one can build a large city with very few and relatively common pieces. Absolutely wonderful! What would typically be behind the buildings in the empty spots?

Thanks a lot! When designing it's also a lot more pleasant as you don't have to constantly be checking if x piece is available in y colour because you're working with pretty common pieces most on the time (plus that makes it cheaper). The size of the plots behind the buildings vary in size depending on the amount of buildings that you put. In my mind, I would put a park along the lines of Begijnhof.