Hullo all. Despite having been first a KFOL then an AFOL for nearly a quarter of a century, I'm surprisingly terrible at actually building! Specifically, I'm not great at thinking up techniques and approaches to make a build stand out beyond just stacked bricks. I've recently been working on a MOC inspired by a local pre-Norman church (pictured below, spoiler-tagged to conserve page space)

Spoiler

I'm not attempting a one-to-one recreation of the church, and I've already made certain adjustments - but while the two segments of the church furthest from the camera aren't posing too many problems, I'm stumped as to how to go about tackling the rounded section nearest to camera. My gut instinct was to use either large cylinders or the wider macaroni bricks, but in both cases the colour palette is limited (I ideally want to use medium nougat or dark tan for this section - though I'm starting to see a certain appeal in making my church all-white for a wider selection of pieces) and to my knowledge there's no way of combining either part with castle window parts. This issue is compounded by the fact that I'm currently in the middle of a large scale sort of my collection (~100k pieces that haven't been sorted properly in more than a decade) and thus most of my Lego is in different bags and boxes in the loft - making it impractical for me to keep digging out different bits from my collection to play around with different methods.

A mock-up of my attempt in Stud.io is linked below:

Spoiler

As you can see, it doesn't work right, so I stopped there.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Or am I chasing a fool's errand trying to pull this one off?

Just Google "round walls with Lego", there are lots of ideas out there.

It would depend at what scale you want to build. For a minifig-scale (can of worms defining that, I know) build, I would probably make the round part octagonal using smaller straight sections on hinges. Check out this topic by @soccerkid6 for some helpful tutorials including round towers.

Also, I believe many medieval buildings were originally whitewashed, so you would have a good reason to build in white.

Lots of inspiration out there, but for something like this (small scale) I would agree that hinged sections would be easy and would work well enough. You might go with either 2- or 4-stud sections so you can easily incorporate the windows into each section that way. Here's a nice larger scale example that also make good use of the technique for an interesting interior:

Radcliff camera insight by Erwin te Kortschot, on Flickr

And here's another thread on EB about building round towers with plenty of examples, several of which you could easily adapt into the half-round for that part of your church:

Happy building!  

I would use 1x1 round bricks and 1x2 bricks, like this moc, built by a eurobricks member http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/tiammath/WIP/lddscreenshot15.png. Just make it a semicircle using 1x1 bricks at the ends instead of 1x2 bricks.

You can use 2x2 bricks in some places to represent the parts of the wall that bulge out, like in teh picture you supplied.

Its very sturdy so you don't need any internal bracing to keep the shape. A long brick across would hold it in place. The advantage of this system is that you can make it whatever width and it should keep its shape, furthermore, sourcing parts in the correct colours wouldn't be difficult as the parts this technique requires are available in almost any colour.

In dark orange a 1x2 brick is about 7-8 Australian Cents and a 1x1 round brick about 5 Australian Cents.

12 hours ago, Pdaitabird said:

It would depend at what scale you want to build. For a minifig-scale (can of worms defining that, I know) build, I would probably make the round part octagonal using smaller straight sections on hinges.

 

12 hours ago, deraven said:

Lots of inspiration out there, but for something like this (small scale) I would agree that hinged sections would be easy and would work well enough.

Of course! Apparently I had a brain fart and forgot the existence of hinges. 

 

10 hours ago, Stuartn said:

I would use 1x1 round bricks and 1x2 bricks, like this moc, built by a eurobricks member http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/tiammath/WIP/lddscreenshot15.png. Just make it a semicircle using 1x1 bricks at the ends instead of 1x2 bricks.

You can use 2x2 bricks in some places to represent the parts of the wall that bulge out, like in teh picture you supplied.

That looks like it would do the trick - and also avoid the issue macaroni bricks have of making everything look smooth and not at all stone-like! Cheers!

Hi thread starter. I am too busy recently to read your thread in details, but I am also interested in MOC a catholic church. Should you have any new update would you please let me know

First of all... pre-Norman church would translate to "Saxon church" to me.  English Saxon church architecture does not generally have rounded apses, as your image shows.  That looks like a later Norman addition to an earlier church.

Here is a LEGO ideas book page of a Saxon church, showing all squared sides....

 

If your intent is to keep it pure Saxon, then eliminate rounded surfaces, which would be later Norman or medieval additions.

24 minutes ago, LEGO Historian said:

of all... pre-Norman church would translate to "Saxon church" to me.  English Saxon church architecture does not generally have rounded apses, as your image shows.  That looks like a later Norman addition to an earlier church.

I may have misspoken. The church in question is primarily of Norman construction, on the site of a Saxon church and with Celtic foundations. Its main point of interest is a Sheela na Gig, which I understood to be a pre-Norman feature but on further research is apparently an element common in the early Norman period. In any case, my intention is specifically to make a MOC inspired by this specific church, rather than a typical church of any period 

On 2/8/2021 at 4:29 PM, LEGO Historian said:

First of all... pre-Norman church would translate to "Saxon church" to me.  English Saxon church architecture does not generally have rounded apses, as your image shows.  That looks like a later Norman addition to an earlier church.

Here is a LEGO ideas book page of a Saxon church, showing all squared sides....

 

If your intent is to keep it pure Saxon, then eliminate rounded surfaces, which would be later Norman or medieval additions.

i'm looking for information about booklet I have pages 2-9 of, see you've page 11, can you help please?