Roman Library Modular Building

Hi everyone,

thanks for looking at my project! This is my first submission to this cite and hopefully not my last. I have recently started to play around with MOC’s and finally ended up with this building. I am an architectural student so hence I went with a building, and a decorated one filled with ornaments. 

This building is aimed to the architecture and and icons fans mostly. It works on its own but is able to connect to other modular buildings so people can implement it to their own amazing lego cities! It has the same size (roughly) as the museum building. Atleast the same sized base.

The idea came to me thinking about what a city need and what buildings have already been made. A library was one of the options. I tried to study the style of current lego building sets and keep to some details I noticed about them to keep it aligned. 

After that I had to settle about a style, that ended up as a roman/ancient greek architectural style. This was for 2 reasons. 1, Most of the buildings from Lego today are more modern and keep the style to a relative new architecture. To make this one stand out more I went with an older one. 2, I was thinking of famous libraries and The library of Alexandria came to mind immediately. Sinse this one is in an older style that I already settled on, I now had my mind set on this idea. 

The proccess started with sketching and research, just like in architecture. I checked out the modular building series that lego has aswell as libraries. Alot of libraries are in older buildings so this fit my theme perfectly. I love to keep things as realistic as possible. Knowing roman architecture from school they are associated with pillars, arches and triangles, much like ancient greece. The pantheon is a great example. Sadly this ment that my front of the building would look a little like the new museum building in terms of the pillars with the trangulated roofing. However, the rest isn’t. 

Roman architecture is alot about roman concrete and bricks or stone. Hence I used alot of the brickwall textured bricks. Aswell as the ingot pieces for variation and depth. 

The colors varied through the project but always stayed around some sort of tan. I am a personal fan of green, as you might tell from the flooring. When the flooring was done on the bottom floor I decided to set on a variation of green for the details and ornaments. It ended up being olive green. Because the tan and olive green blend well toghether it became a bit bland in color. I therefore wanted a stand out color that catches the eye. 

I came up with the idea of the dark red when making the statue at the front and thinking of what color a roman soldier would have had. When I added the red top part to the helmet it all came togheter. I kept the red to a minimal use so it doesn’t overwhelm and take over the rest. My colorpalett was now set. 

The interier was fun to do too but challenging, especially small details like the lamps on the tables. I tried to make it look like an older library on the inside aswell and used some inspiration from the 3rd Indiana jones movie when they are in the library at the start. I added things like the old clock on the middle floor aswell to enhance this feeling. I also like to play with elevations and wanted to keep the inside open and light. The 2 statues on the middle floor is also a nice touch I am happy with. 

The roof was also a challenge but I thought ”why not skip the roof and make it a floor aswell?”. So that is what I did. I also thought that the roof, now being a terrace, would be an awsome place for tables and an area to sit in. Alot of students like myself use libraries as a study place so I made alot of the figures into teens that might be in high school. This gives of more of a playful happy feeling that I love. 

The terrace is also made as a lunch area, if maybe a school class is on visit this is a place where you can rest and eat. Or like in one of the photos where the grandparents can rest and grab a snack while the grand child chases birds. 

I am really happy with the end result and alot of the details like the lamp posts, big trees, entrence & stairs, the window segments, the brick texture throughout etc. I think the building is unique enough to bring alot to a lego city and have enough details and playful colors to work on its own. There is alot of things going on in the set and you can create alot of different scenes aswell on your own. I therefore think this set would make a great set for the community to enjoy.

I hope you like this little story and see all the effort and time put into this submission. I hope it makes it worth your like and support. 

Thanks for reading and checking it out,

Best regards,

Tobias