MOC: Bryggen - Architecture Scale

[L@go]

Hello all!

I live in Bergen on the Norwegian west coast. It's the second largest city in Norway, with about 270,000 inhabitants (yes, really, it's tiny...) and, since I'm not originally from here and not too biased, I think I can say that it's certainly one of the most, if not the most beautiful city we have up here. At least when the sun is shining, which sadly isn't too often - Bergen has a reputation for being the rain capital of Norway...

Anyway - the arguably most famous landmark in Bergen is Bryggen (Norwegian for The Wharf), which is - I quote from Wikipedia - "a series of Hanseatic commercial buildings lining the eastern side of the fjord coming into Bergen. Bryggen has since 1979 been on the UNESCO list for World Cultural Heritage sites. (...) Today, Bryggen houses tourist, souvenir, and gift shops, in addition to restaurants, pubs and museums."

I first attempted to build a version of Bryggen in MLCad a couple of years ago, but gave up after I discovered that the 40 or so 1x1 dark green plates I had used didn't actually exist in any set. They still don't, and although they probably will in the near future I didn't know that when I heard about the Architecture contest at the Eurobricks Event 2014. So for this new version - which I eventually managed to finish for the contest - I worked my way around the problem. There's still a fair few rare bricks in it, but nothing that I couldn't get hold of. Typically, the 1x1 trans-clear tiles were very rare when I built this - but they're just about to be released in larger quantities in the Trevi Fountain set...

I wanted to avoid making the buildings too similar, so I built them one by one, from left to right, using mainly this Wikipedia picture as my reference, trying to pick the most easily recognisable details from each building and translate them into microscale. I started with all the facades, then filled them out to four studs deep, and finished the base last. And then I had the Norwegian Certified LEGO Professional Matija Puzar engrave a tile for me, to make the MOC look as much like an official set as possible.

As I don't normally build this small, this whole thing was a challenge, but a fun one, and I'm very happy with it. It didn't do particularly well at the event, but I had fun making it anyway, and I especially enjoyed moving outside my comfort zone for once. I might just do that more often - which I believe, in general, is an absolute necessity to improve as a builder.

Hope you like it - thanks for watching! More pictures in the Flickr set.

The finished product along with the picture I used for reference.

Some of the details:

And, finally, a little presentation I made to go along with it:

[viracocha]

Very impressive! So many details you have replicated in so small scale! I wonder you have build it only using photos or you have been there?

[Kristel]

These are instantly recognisable and look fantastic! Great presentation too.

[L@go]

Thanks for the kind words, both!

I mainly used the reference picture while building - it's such a pain to sit down and build right in the middle of town, so I find it easier to do it at home ;) - but yes, I've been there many times. All the reference pictures in the main post, except the Wikipedia panorama shot in the first picture, are my own, taken on a very nice sunny day in the beginning of this month.

[Aredhel]

Really liked your model at the EB Event in Billund. You really brought some of those little nice details into the Architecture model very well.

Not getting so many votes at the EB contest is not so bad at all. I think all of us liked the models which were made, but we couldn't vote for all

Hopefully I will visit the "original" one day! It really looks like a nice place to have a holiday

[L@go]

Really liked your model at the EB Event in Billund. You really brought some of those little nice details into the Architecture model very well.

Not getting so many votes at the EB contest is not so bad at all. I think all of us liked the models which were made, but we couldn't vote for all

Hopefully I will visit the "original" one day! It really looks like a nice place to have a holiday

Thank you! I wasn't that disappointed about the contest - only being given three points to distribute among all those great entries was always going to mean heaps of points for the entries that really stood out, and not that many for the rest. So no big deal - I ended up with a prize I was more than reasonably happy with anyway :)

What I really enjoyed, though, was meeting you and all the other lovely Eurobrickers in Billund. Let me know if you ever take the trip up here (loads of Germans do every year...) and I'll show you the Norwegian fjords!

[Aredhel]

I definetely will!