Small Japanese shops (1/300)

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The modern family house influenced by the Japanese traditional style. Sakamoto Sanda's N60.

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A Green Tower (グリーンタワー)

Last few weeks I worked on one more glass-facade building. Please forgive me if you prefer the material purity - of course it could be made as a full-paper, including the facade and railings, but I am extremely fond of mirror walls and the reflections of plants in windows were an important part of my design. As for the railings, the photoetched elements are highly accepted in the ship paper modelling, so I had no doubts here. And as for the plants, it could not be done in this scale if they should look realistic.

Once again, I made it from scratch and the design is my own too (however it bears resemblance to the numerous existing Japanese skyscrapers, because I want it to be as Japanese itself as possible). Well, this very building definitely couldn't be classified as a "small Japanese shop", because it is a tall building and even could be called a skyscraper itself: it was (and it will be perhaps) the tallest building in Nekomura and from the ground level to the top of the mast it is 335 mm high in scale (100,5 m).

The lower part of the building (a ground floor and four floors above) shall contain the Daimaru supermarket. On the roof of the lower part (sixth floor level) there will be a coffee (maybe Starbucks? The Japanese liked the brand very much). The tall part will be owned by Hilton Hotels (floors seven to twenty and a small observation deck on the floor 21). The lifts and staircase segment will have three floors more (technical floors) and a telecommunication mast on its flat roof (the level of the floor 24).

The architectural idea was to make a really Green Tower (it was the working name of the building), merging the green colored glass with as many plants as possible.

In the next posts I will share few images "making of" step by step, in order to make you sure it was really made of paper!

The work is still in the progress.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

The main parts skeleton and the glass facades.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

The upper level planted with grasses, bushes and flowers.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

The first attempt to make the furniture for the cafe (after the dollhouse design from 1970s) and the (plastic) figures.
For the moment I haven't glued them in, they will be too fragile, so I will complete the cafe terrace after completing of all the walls of the lower part.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

The remaining levels of the balconies planted with the vegetation.
I used mostly the same clumps of grass / flowers (10 types in total, mostly divided into 2, 3, or 4 pieces each to make them smaller) which I used earlier in the "trees in flowerpots" little dioramas, and I added a few pieces of ears of dried grass, painted green, for thuja bushes.

As I expected, each row of the plants is "duplicated" in the mirror reflections and the small spots of blue and red flowers emphasize the overall impression of greenery.
In my opinion the result is satisfying.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

Now, let the architectural and aesthetic design to wait for a while and let's focus on the engineering and technical devices.

First, to secure the mean of access to all the technical devices on the staircase rooftop I added an external stairs plus the safety railings around the roof.

Next, the mast was added. Due to its height, according to the air transportation safety regulations it must be painted red and white (the first and the last zone red). The microwaves (GSM) antennae were added and the electrical boxes put in the bottom.

Perhaps I will add few satellite dishes later.

Note: the whole staircase with the external stairs and the mast are removable (not glued to the round tall part nor to the cafe terrace) to avoid damaging them when working on the cafe, the back walls of the lower part and the ground level devices. As far as now each floor of the lower part is a separate block too and the round tall tower can be removed as well (to secure better access to the cafe terrace). They shan't be glued together before all the details are ready.
(The last two images show an assembly drawing and the simplified cross section with the levels in milimetres)

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

After the underground car park was added, the lower part of the building was finally glued together and the "tiled" rear walls added.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

The entrances to the shops on the ground level have been marked with their brands and vertical advertising panels. The remaining doors between the shops lead to the interior and the staircase and to the upper levels of the market. The doorway to the hotel reception has been made too. On the rear walls few evacuational doors, air intake louvres and electrical cabinets have been added and on the terraced roof the big hvac unit equipped with two fans was placed.

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The Green Tower (to be continued)

The flashings on the tower were added and the cafe terrace finished and equipped with more (metal) railings, 13 tables, 29 chairs and 18 (plastic) figures of the staff and customers.

Everything has just been glued together. Now only the few more brand signs remained to be added and I will return to the more classic "full paper" buildings (although in the future few more glass sheets will be used for the facades).