Rauy

Well, it's also the Greek goddess of, among other things, the moon. Of course they could also be Andy Weir fans, but I'm kinda bettin' on Greek mythology more than Superman II.

Let me introduce you to a new, or rather old, build contest this month. Like some of you might remember, next to various build months like FebRovery or SHIPtember, there once also was Marchitecture, for building microscale architecture MOCs in March. However, since this ended back 5 years ago, I decided to revive this concept. So this March we're celebrating Marchitecture yet again! Everyone is invited to contribute Architecture MOCs. The builds should model an "existing" original, concentrate on man-made immobile structures (i.e. buildings) and be smaller than minifig scale, basically in spirit of the LEGO Architecture series (but you don't have to adhere to LEGOs strict design principles). There's two different categories, one for models based on real or historic buildings and one for buildings from films, games and other media. Both categories also accept digital entries, but they should at least try to make a structurally coherent build and not go overboard with unavailable part colours either. There's two prizes for each category, a LEGO set and a custom-build trophy, as well as a third prize pair for all digital entries. So how do you take part? The whole thing works similar to Summer Joust and the like. There's a Flickr group, which also contains further information about the contest and rules, with entry threads for the individual categories. And you can also participate on Instagram using the hashtag #marchitecture2024. Happy building (and tell your friends)!

I have to agree. $230 is too much, no matter the part count! It's a friggin' Creator Expert set. Release those if you want, they're nice sets, but they're not Architecture sets. But actually, at this suspuciously low price per part, I'm afraid it might even be some kind of mosaic or some other hybrid wall decoration thing. Maybe it's a cool idea, we'll see. But those numbers are...concerning.

Once again absolutely brilliant work, both on the historical and the modern sides! The detail work on the facades, the various angles, the colour choices, beautiful piece of LEGO architecture all around.

Wow, great work! While the shiny facade is a real eye-catcher, all those details, angles and slight height variations are amazing, too.

So Himeji Castle is a step away from tourist attractions? I'm not quite following. Also, those glorious Adam Reed Tucker sets weren't 2000 piece 1m³ behemoths either (yes, except for Robie House).

Well, yes.

Oh, wow, now that's an interesting choice! I don't really like the price tag or that we need to set yet another size/price record in Architecture. But I guess LEGO's bigger-wider-faster trend is something we have to live with now. I do like the topic choice, though.

Wow, what an amazing project! A wonderful rendition as an architecture model and a truely breathtaking endeavour. Great work and thanks also for the insights into the building process!

Wow, great work! Beautiful little nanoscale model with some really neat techniques, especially the use of claws and flags.

While I don't have the closest connection to Space Police II, one of my favourite childhood sets was actually the little rocket-pulling rover 6852 Sonar Security. I always liked that design with its many wide little space wheels and the trailer that balanced on a single axle and found it extremely swooshable. So inspired by a collaborative 90s-style spaceway at Bricking Bavaria and various revival build contests, I built a remake of it. Of course the design tries to stay close to the colour composition of the original and its faction, being black, grey and red with green glass elements. In addition to that there's also some accents in flat silver and pearl dark grey, which should extend the colour palette reasonably, though. In general the remake is quite a bit bigger than the original, which not only allows for a bit more detail but also makes the rocket trailer a more functional launching platform than just having a rocket stand there unsecured. Originally I actually thought about using tracks instead of wheel as an update of those old-school space wheels. But then I saw the wheels from the 3-in-1 rover and used those instead. Not only do they capture the design of the original set more accurately, they also allow for flexible wheel suspension and an even more rovery feel. For best offroad capabilities the wheels are thereby suspensed differently, similar to the 3-in-1 rover. The wheels on the lorry bob from side to side while the wheels on the trailer bob along the side. This also has the side effect that the trailer actually swings around a single axle like in the original set and is only held in balance by the connection to the lorry. But while a ladder can be folded down at the back for additional stability, the trailer is still not really made for decoupling because of another feature. What I really like is the lighting, especially the fact that the MOC doesn't just have 5 LEDs worked into the design but also carries the whole power supply, conveniently hidden behind the cockpit and accessible through a hatch on the roof for easy on/off switching. The cabling isn't always hidden completely, but for a space vehicle that's not necessarily a bad thing. Though, I still tried to lead the cables reasonably through the vehicle as well as integrate that into a sensible instruction flow. Building instructions can be found on Rebrickable.

Growing up in the 90s, the Black Knight's Castle (6086) from '92 has always been the quintessential LEGO castle to me. With its big 3D baseplate it was a really massive presence and it had everything that to this day still defines a stereotypical castle for me, a big gate with a working drawbridge and portcullis, well-defended towers and walls, a cozy house with beautiful yellow tudor framework and red roof and a neat little back entrance, together with the cool glow-in-the-dark ghost and a dungeon inside the base accessed via a trapdoor. One of my biggest and most favourite sets as a child, I built this a lot over the years. Jump forward almost 30 years and even before the huge 400€ nostalgia castle there's another cool castle within the Creator 3-in-1 series. And while that's of course only a 3-in-1 playset, it works really well as exactly that and still looks really nice for what it is. So I asked myself, what would the almost 3 decades older legend of LEGO castles look like in the style of this new 3-in-1 castle? Well, wonder no longer, because that's how it might actually look like: Now keep in mind this is a deliberate attempt at porting the style of the 3-in-1 castle over to the architecture of the old castle, so it isn't going to sport the most elaborate building techniques. However, I still took the liberties of refining the 3-in-1 style a bit more for a more rounded composition as well as nicer battlements and roofs. But while I tried to use as many parts as possible from the 3-in-1 set, I explicitly decided against a pure alternative build, as that would have limited the part selection too much and when in doubt, it was usually aesthetics over part reuse. You'll note it also uses the old 3D baseplate, which I think is an integral part of the Black Knight's Castle's design and appeal. Other than that, it wasn't too difficult porting the sets over, as both quite rigorously use a 6-high storey design. But of course I didn't want to just capture the old castle's architectural features but also its play features, and combine them with the new castle's. Most of the interior and furniture is directly taken from the 3-in-1 castle, so we have the blacksmith with his workshop, the throne and fireplace, the food stall, as well as the dungeon complete with removeable wall. Only for the watermill and its mechanism there wasn't any room anymore. From the old castle we got the floor dungeon with trapdoor as well as the back entrance to the house and of course the good old ghost is there too, together with the skeleton from the new set. The gate uses the string-based drawbdrige from the old set, but with the automatic locking mechanism from the new set. It also ports this mechanism over to the portcullis, which in the old set was manually operated (the only reason I use a newer part here is aesthetics, the old big portcullis piece would fit just as well). Using string, while maybe not as beautiful or modern, has the advantage that the unlocking and falling mechanism of the drawbridge works a lot more smoothly than in the Creator set. Of course the whole thing also comes with building instructions on Rebrickable. The Creator 3-in-1 castle is a good starting point, covering about half of the 1800 pieces. From the others only the 3D baseplate (if you don't own the original castle) and the 2x5 bricks with the portcullis rail might be a bit problematic, since they're a bit rare in dark bluish grey. The figures are of course only a "serving suggestion", but using the ones from the Creator set makes sense (and the MOC uses the same Black Falcon theming of that and other recent castle revivals).

Thanks a lot for the nice comments everyone! That's an interesting point, because they weren't particularly easy to do. I understand what you mean and I'm not perfectly satisfied with them either. However, it was rather difficult to find something that closes off the base sufficiently (so it doesn't look like a fragile stone lattice) but also isn't too bulky, and that still sets the dark wall parts slightly inward from the corners. Steeper slopes would simply collide with the 3D baseplate, at least when using them on the bottom layer. I might have used steeper slopes higher up, but then it would just look even bulkier (and still leave somewhat jagged gaps on the sides). The classic set anchors the towers on the inward corners of the baseplate, which integrates them a bit better into the base. But that is harder to do with square towers than round ones and would have led to too big gaps (a problem is also that while the big side walls of the baseplate perfectly fit a 3-high inverted slope, the walls of the inward corners are actually slightly steeper for whatever reason), so I felt the only choice was basically wrapping the entire corner in walls, which I agree can look a bit chunky.

Oh, a castle in my favourite colour! Really interesting and unique build, works quite well together with the sand green nature. I also like the various detail shots.

Thanks a lot for the nice comments! Yes, they're TIE cockpits (usually used in Microfighters or any other sub-minifig versions). I discovered that 4x4 dishes would fit nicely onto those wheels and then looked for something a bit more exciting than just transparent. There's actually also a ton of trans-green 1x1 round bricks inside the wheels, but you can hardly see them through the trans-black dishes. Thanks! The decision fell early to use that big wheel from the Creator Expert cars as engine, which brought flat silver into the mix, so using it for the piping on the side was a fitting choice. I also considered adding metallic, like for the floor grating on the trailer, but then stuck to flat to not bring too many colours into it. The pearl dark grey came from the wheels and I was glad to see that the big scaffold piece for the rocket tower was also available in that colour.

As I didn't have much time to concern myself with this year's Summer Joust, I decided to just build a few Architecture models, mostly inspired by the African Setting category. They're all UNESCO World Heritage sites, as this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and coincidentally they're all (more or less) from the 13th century. Okay, the first one is technically from the the 20th century, specifically 1906/7, as it is the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali. However, it is supposedly recreating the original mosque that was built in the 13th century but left to fall into disrepair in the 19th century. And while it is debated how much influence the French administration had on the building, it has been built by the local masons' guild using traditional techniques and is a prime example of traditional Sahelian clay architecture. I captured it on the small scale of 1:400 with the primary driver for the design being the 1x2 tooth plate for the characteristic clay design and studs for emphasizing the rodier palm sticks. Then I built a model of one of the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia, which were actually among the very first sites to be declared UNESCO World Heritage in 1978. These churches were cast right out of the volcanic ground in their entirety in an effort by King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela to recreate Jerusalem in the Ethipian Highlands in the 12th and 13th century. I built one of the most prominent ones, the cross-shaped Bete Giyorgis (House of St. George), which fits quite well into the LEGO grid on a rather large scale of 1:100. It's not a particularly complicated building with a lot of facade detail to begin with, but it is a rather interesting building nevertheless and a neat addition to my repertoire of mostly European churches. Finally and more or less spontaneously, I also built a rather small model for the 12x12 Vignette category. I recently rediscovered my 6-wide octagon technique and it fits just perfectly for a model of Castel del Monte at a very small scale of 1:900. This building, built under Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in Apulia, Italy is mostly known for its characteristic octagonal design, so gettting that right was the most important thing for capturing it. The towers (although originally also octagonal) then fit quite naturally around it in the correct spots. A little entrance and the whole thing is done. Building instructions for all three models can be found on my Rebrickable profile. I also want to thank the Zamani Project, a research project for documenting mostly African heritage, which among other resources also provides freely browsable 3D models of the two African sites above, which were very helpful in designing the corresponding LEGO recreations.

Thanks a lot!

A really nice rendition! An all around great piece of LEGO architecture.

I normally just pick Arial for mine (also depends what the printing service has available). But I don't have a big "font eye" and any sans serif is usually just "Arial" to me. Still, thanks for finding it out. However, I have a feeling they might also have changed it up a little recently.

I didn't really understand what the use of a second set of Chinese Wall was either. The single model perfectly captured the essence of the original in a not too big set, exactly how a proper Architecture set should. 20 more of the towers and wall pieces didn't really improve anything since they looked the same and you're not going to build the entire wall anyway. That being said, with the Chinese Wall set the extension at least made sense, because the repeated elements are repetetive in reality, too. But two entrances and two Niles are just dumb. Of course you can say everyone can modify it anyway and build the backside differently. But you can say that about every LEGO set and in that case, presenting it as a mere "buy two and put them together" option is a bit disingenuous. What could have worked (without making the part count explode with useless pieces) would have been the option to leave away the whole front half with the Nile (i.e. making the depth of the base only half as big) and maybe covering the entrance with a few more white slope pieces. This would mean you'd have superflous Nile village pieces in the second set, but at least the people who really want to buy that second set would get a proper backside.

Well, true indeed. The fact that it's also done in the most simple and effortless way possible (by just putting in two Technic bricks and letting everyone else figure out what to do with two entrances and two Niles) only makes it an even more genius marketing gimmick, I guess. But I'm also glad that they're leaving this option to people who really want a giant foursided block of white slopes covering their entire dining table (and are willing to pay for that), while I can put a set that's just small enough to still count as an Architecture set neatly into my shelf.

Uh...you know that those same regular online stores will...like...also offer the Pyramid for a lot less than 120€, right? And the fact that you want to buy two sets for whatever reason is kind of your decision and not the fault of the Pyramid set (although, the product description unfortunately presents this stupid idea as a viable approach). Of course that...well...kind of...doubles the price. And then you still only have a minfig castle, rather than a microscale Egyptian panorama. You might like the former more than the latter, of course. But again, that's kind of your decision. I have to say, I find the price somewhat unreasonable, too. But that comparison is just ridiculous really.

I wouldn't automatically assume that the pyramid covers the entire width of the diorama anyway (unless I have missed that in the description).

Really great job and very coherent design, on the buildings as well as the landscape! That little helicopter ist also very neat. I really like those trees, I've never seen those little micro palms put directly onto flower stems.

Really EVERYTHING sounds better than a 600€ 5m Eiffel Tower. ;-) But yes, the description of the pyramid set sounds somewhat optimistic, al least regarding its optics (I still have problems with the general size and price directions). I don't really need the interiors, but if they're done well, they might be a neat addition. I think, though, the option for completing it into a full pyramid is rather stupid, since you'd also double/mirror everything else. That makes even less sense than the Chinese Wall thing. But I don't really need a full pyramid anyway, since the whole thing is going to sit on a shelf against a wall anyway and we already had other sets without a proper backside. So I'm fine fine with half a pyramid, especially if that means spending more effort on the rest of the scenery and not making the set explode even more.