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Hello, this is my first post, but longtime follower. I have a few questions near the end of this post that I would love to have input, comments and hopefully solutions while developing my model. Intro I have been working on and off a proportional Ghostbusters firehouse that makes the LA interior fit the NY exterior. Working with blueprints from both places, reference images from Ghostbusters 1 & 2, reference from the interior set from gbfans.com and talking to various people in the Ghostbuster community, I have been trying to make my own version of the firehouse in LDD. I have a lot of respect for Sergio's beautiful design and Orion Pax's ultimate headquarters. I also like what Brent Waller did on his LDD file. I took Sergio's file with interior and began my journey. At first I used his width proportions and made the baseplate floor plan 60 bricks long, then worked on a 62 brick version. As I began reconstructing the interior to fit the 4 fire poles, 2 sets of 3 door storage lockers, the mechanic closet near the front garage door, the stairs, the bathroom in the front next to the other garage door and the opposite maintenance closet midway down the hallway I realized the size was too small. I tried to make it work with Venkman's office, struggling to make it fit with a storage in the back, so I shrunk his office quite a bit, but could not fit his chair, desk and client seats without hindering the details on the back wall. After several months of tinkering in my free time, I realized that by making the width of the front 24 bricks wide for the main building, with the slope adding 2 bricks, making it 26 total bricks wide, the front would actually fit the same number of bricks the actual Hook and Ladder 8 fits across. The name plates on both side under the lights would fit perfectly centered in a 6 brick wide wall. The appropriate length, based on floor plans, and google maps, meant that if the door is 4 bricks wide, then the walls needed to be 72 bricks long. I used a blueprint and overplayed in photoshop my ldd file to see where it would match up on the plate. Technically 71 bricks would make it work, but i needed an even number for windows and doors to match up perfectly. This also allowed me to get the appropriate height I need for my new customer LEGO Ideas echo 1. I will get to that later. The first thing I noticed was that Orion Pax had his spot on in terms of appropriate length, fitting the following layout I used off of gbfans.com as my official guide to the layout of the firehouse since they merged the interior of the real location into the shorter Hook and Ladder 8 "box". The movie made use of the office windows in the second floor lab my making it appear to be the firehouse exterior windows of the back alleyway, we never see in the film. The actual alley between the long side of the firehouse and the next building, has a small extended wall with a gate that encloses off the area. The google maps images were perfect in showing the second and third floor windows in relationship to the building. They justified my reasons to placing windows on the back wall for the lab I will create. The video game made a few years ago had a great firehouse walkthrough, i used to help figure out the layout. They used the size and shape of the actual interior of the LA location to make it and felt huge. The second floor had too much space as they stretched out the rooms to fit what was shown on screen. They made the bathrooms, bedroom and living room ridiculously large. With this said, I included the layout of the gbfans layout. Orion Pax created a huge replica, surprisingly, his is 30 bricks wide by 78 bricks long. My replica will be 26 bricks wide by 74 long. What does that mean, besides less brick count? I only need to raise the total height of Sergio's model by 1 to 2 bricks. I will however need to alter the grey bricks surrounding the windows in order to make them screen accurate. Orion did this quite well and only needed to use the regular height of the LEGO bricks to achieve this. When I tried laying out his dimensions, I realized that he used 3 2brick wide window panels for the center set of windows and he actually could have used the normal 4 brick wide windows to make it screen accurate. Although I assume he did this in order to make the window air conditioner smaller because I will tell you it looks huge in a normal window (see images below). After lots of thought, I did my best to recreate the floor plan without making my model any larger. The nice part about making it a bit smaller it feels more appropriate to LEGO minifies. I still think its huge. This is why I tried so hard to get it to stay the same width as Sergio's model and try to keep it at 60-64 bricks long. I really wish I didn't accidentally save over that version because I used Orion Pax's middle window idea and it worked out quite well. Questions/Concerns So is it closer to scale? almost. lol. Without going as large as Orion Pax did, I lose space to fit everything in the garage. He had enough space on his layout to include a bathroom on the left side of the garage door. He showed space for an elevator shaft where I am placing the mechanic closet and water heater. He had plenty of space between the fire poles and echo 1. Garage bathroom As you will see in my layouts, I have a window, and a closed off room that can accommodate a 2x3 brick lol. DO YOU GUYS HAVE ANY SOLUTIONS OR SUGGESTIONS THAT CAN HELP SOLVE THIS ISSUE? I wish that I could come up with a better solution for the garage door so I didn't need to lose that extra brick width and I could fit a toilet in the bathroom and maybe a sink by making the room 2x4. I thought about using 1x2x3 panels in the bathroom area to open up the space a bit more. I wish LEGO made doors 3 wide and 5 or 6 bricks tall. That would answer this issue and question 2 The 2 sets of storage lockers As you can see, I added extra images of the contraction of it. I heavily modified Sergio's idea, basically grouping the lockers together and making them enclosed. I am not a huge fan of the exposed hinge, but I did the doors revered because it felt like the embezzling on the wood in the movie. I know I need to fix the top to have the decoration peaks and curves which I will use the 1x1 slope to make this work like the LEGO official set did. IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR ALTERING OR IMPROVING THE DESIGN OF THE STORAGE LOCKERS THAT WOULD BE A BLESSING. biggest gripe In order to hold them in place I had to use snot techniques and the right side of the far left set of lockers had to use flat bricks running up the green wall. This didn't allow for the nice white, green, white pattern to work. I would prefer to make it fit somehow with the wall as is and not have a weird gap or bricks turned sideways. As you will see, the reason why that 2x8 plate is attached to the brown lockers is holding the door hinges up. And overall, it overhangs the brick width just a tad. If I could figure out a simpler solution and one that doesn't use so many rare bricks I would be super excited. The actual number of lockers near the front are 4, space between and another 3. Unless I do them in 2 to 2.5 bricks wide, i won't be able to get 4. The new Official LEGO set uses 2x4 door panels. My space allows for 9 bricks wide, gap, wall structure pole, then another storage locker about 9 bricks wide again. - Solution would easiest be solved if LEGO had a 3 wide door at 5 to 6 bricks tall lol. Sacrificing space in Venkman's office As you will see in the photos, I made Venkman's office with a large storage area behind it just like the movie. Orion Pax didn't include a storage space, but he definitely had the width to fit the movie accuracy shape. SHOULD I EXPAND VENKMANS OFFICE BY 1 BRICK AND REMOVE THE DOOR ON THE RIGHT SIDE? In the movie and photos provided by GBfans.com there is clearly a door on the right side, you see it when Venkman jumps the door when Dana arrives. *** Solution would easiest be solved if LEGO had a 3 wide door at 5 to 6 bricks tall lol. If I expand the office, I can offset the desk and chairs 1/2 a brick to recenter it. I could move Janine's desk 1 brick down, and it would allow the gliding doors 5 bricks wide between them instead of 4. It would allow me to fake filing cabinets using 2x2 bricks instead of their 3wide cabinets. This would realign all 4 the green pillars like the movie and layout from gbfans. ONLY ISSUE: not sure if it will fit the echo-1 between them since its 8-9bricks wide. If we can figure out the locker issue, that would solve this next question. Otherwise: SHOULD I ADD THE SAME STYLE LOCKERS TO THE OPPOSITE SIDE NEAR JANINE'S DESK? As you can see in the layout, there are a set of 3 more lockers (9 bricks wide) that would need to be placed near her desk. Whatever I do with Question 2, obviously affects this issue. WHAT DO I DO WITH THE GROSS DARK ORANGE WALL BEHIND THE LOCKERS? In the movie, as well as the actual Hook and Ladder 8 location, the stairwell wall does not fit within the box much like it's LA interior location. TARDIS ISSUE!!!!! Seriously, after visiting the area, I went in the alley way and noticed they have a side door. My only guess is it is an emergency exit for the stairwell. I am sure they have storage inside the area as well, but its basically just a set of stairs. I don't know what to do with this shape. The official set, Sergio and Pax all omitted it. Sergio and LEGO made matching windows to the other street side view. LEGO made a nice set of stairs scaffolding and doors most NY buildings have. The video game breaks all rules and used the interior of the LA location to place the windows on the back wall on the second and 3rd floor. I may be fine with that since the movie shows the kitchen and lab area with windows that don't exist on the exterior location since there is a stairwell wall there. Currently, I placed a door inside the area where it leads to the basement under the stairs. I thought it was a good idea since we never saw the top of the stairs before. Future issues Stairs for 2nd and 3rd floor. Current layout shows stairs don't exist. Reason? Well in the real location the stairs continue up to the 3rd floor from the same set of stairs that started on the first floor. Just 1 long star case. In the movie, they blocked it off with a fake wall to make people think that was the back of the building. They never showed any other rooms from the 3rd floor so various layouts justified that the 3rd floor must be an extra set of beds, kitchen, and laboratory as well as their dark room from GB 2 scene. It would make sense since they used one of the rooms on the second floor that was located behind the blocked off area I believe. Photo reference: Found by a ghostbuster fan, who posted this on deviant art.com
