Historical architecture by Viator

[Viator]

Thank you very much, Philip!

[Viator]

The chapel of San Miguel (St Michael) in Celanova.
Original model Secanda 16.4 in 1/100 shrunk to 1/300.


"With 8.5m long, 3.85m wide and a maximum of 6m high, it is the smallest Mozarabic church that we know of. As stated in a document of beginnings of the 11th century, this small oratorium was built in the orchard of the Monastery of Celanova in 936 by San Rosendo de Dumio in memory of his brother Froila, its founder."
"It is a jewel of Mozarab art, with three bodies: a vestibule; the nave, of quadrangular plan, and an apse of circular plan but rectangular from the outside. Inside, it has a cross vault on horseshoe arches in the transept and raised dome."
"It is the only Spanish High-Medieval monument that has not suffered any modifications since it was built in the 10th century."


And it was the smallest model in the series I built so far. It consists exactly of 50 pcs (although 32 of them are triangles 1.25 by 1.5 mm under the roof).

[Viator]

I spent the last weekend in Drohiczyn, the very old and historically important little town in the eastern Poland. The typical Polish-Russian borderland architecture of the town (Drohiczyn was few times gained and regained by the Polish and Ruthenian kings and princes and in the 19th century it was a part of a Russian partition) comprises of two churches and abbeys (Franciscan and Benedictine) and a cathedral complex (with population of just two thousand it is still a capital of a Roman catholic diocese) as well as the relatively big orthodox temple and many preserved 19th century wooden houses, however many of them are in ruin now.

Most of these small living houses are generic - typical for most of the big villages and little towns in Eastern Poland and they share an interesting form with the original main ("clean") entrance moved from the front facade to the "dirty" rear doors and replaced with the sun parlor or little veranda. This process followed the process of urbanization, when the yard ceased to play an agricultural role, the horses and cattle disappeared and the tractors, reapers or threshers were removed, so the yard itself and the rear doors are no longer dirty.

During the visit I made few photos and I decided to make a model of one of these buildings (6th Tadeusza Kościuszki street, next to the orthodox St Nicholas temple).
The dark brown version is a first attempt, the yellow is a final model with improved proportions and few details.
The photo images were straightened and the dividing lines between the planks were darkened in Ms Paint.
I had no possibility to measure the dimensions - length or width - of the original building, so I scaled the images down to get 10 mm between the windowsills of the ground floor and first floor, so the achieved scale shall be approximately 1/300.

[georgerutherford1861]

Wonderful work in such a small scale, your builds are always nice to see, especially with the location and historical information you provide.

Doug

[Viator]

Originally Posted by georgerutherford1861

Wonderful work in such a small scale, your builds are always nice to see, especially with the location and historical information you provide.

Doug

Thank you very much! It's great to know that I can share my interest in miniature world with so many of you!

[Viator]

The orthodox church in Babice, South-Eastern Poland

Between the still numerous wooden temples in Poland there are many orthodox (or former orthodox) little churches still in use. The building chosen by GPM to issue as the paper model is pretty generic and I know many such simple, small, mostly 18th century village churches in the East and few of them are my favorite ones despite their monochromatic exterior and poor decoration. It's a pity that the church in Babice, though registered as a historical monument and the part of Polish cultural heritage, was abandoned many decades ago and now it is in ruin. The GPM model represents the little church as it looked in 1960s in 1/100 scale. As usual, I reduced the size to 1/300 and made few minor changes, for example I replaced the bended corners with the glued ones with separate tabs in order to avoid round edges and I simplified bottom part (in original model it's sloped). The crosses were made as usual out of the photoetched ship railings.

(gallery 1 of 2)

[Viator]

(gallery 2 of 2)

[Viator]

The bell tower

The complete model of the Babice orthodox church includes the bell tower.

It is pretty standard for wooden church of the kind to have a separate low bell tower, because the wooden structure of the church itself is not strong enough to hang the heavy bell on the top. Only the small secondary bell is located over the rooftop in the little ridge turret (called "sygnaturka" in Poland), but the main bell, weighing few hundreds kilograms at least (and the more the set of three similar bells, particularly popular in the orthodox churches due to the carillions being played by the bell-ringers) must be fixed to the lower, stubby, more robust wooden structure.

This particular bell tower was built rotated to the main nave axis of the church however most of the bell towers preserved up to now are oriented parallel.

[Viator]

Land Of The Open Shutters

Many of the still inhabited old traditional village houses in the Eastern Poland has unkempt appearance and they need complex renovation, and their inhabitants perhaps are dreaming of moving to the newly built, modern and comfortable apartments or villas. Many other huts are just abandoned. But some of the owners are rich enough and decided to invest their savings in renovation and modernization. Sometimes the whole local community decided to do so and one of such special areas in Poland when one can experience the result is the so called Land of the Open Shutters ("Kraina Otwartych Okiennic"). Nearly all the huts in these villages are renovated and decorated with the special focus set on the shutters, which received its distinctive painting.

In the ExtraModels magazine No. 78 simple models of two houses from this "land" were printed in TT railway scale (1/120). The specific location wasn't given, but with the little help of the Google Graphic search engine and the Google Maps Street View one can identify the source buildings to be Trześcianka #58 (the orange hut) and Plutycze #69 (the green one).

I decided to focus on the Trześcianka No.58 building. The Plutycze No.69 hut looks very nice with the white horses on the front wall but this decoration is a modern one and has nothing in common with the historical look (compare the attached images after and before the renovation).

The original model proved to be meant as a generic rather than as a model of an existing hut. Trześcianka 58 building front facades (street+entrance) were modelled more or less accurate, but the rear walls are pure fantasy. The windows in the longitudinal rear wall should differ from the front windows with their form, size and number and with the lack of shutters. The rear gable wall should have no openings at all; it is connected to the outbilding or annex covered with the separate, mono-pitched roof made of galvanized metal sheets. The elaborated decorative wooden angles covering the corners should have been attached to the street facade only. The porch side windows should have got the colored glass panels in the lower row and the porch doors should have been by no mean recessed (it would be impossible due to the thin, non-insulated porch walls). All these faults were fixed after scaling down the sheets to 1/300 and in addition the decorative shutters were repainted because the original colors were wrong.

The final touch was an addition of the firewood collected under the sloping roof, made of few very thin birch twigs cut in 3.5 mm long pieces and glued together with polyvinyl white glue.

[Viator]

Akdamar Island (now in Turkey) - Armenian Holy Cross Cathedral.

Built 915-921 C.E., looted and abandoned thousand years later (1915), renovated and partially rebuilt by the Turkish authorities after 2005 and now again in use. A monument of the far gone times when the Armenian kingdom was a Near East power, supported Frankish crusaders and opposed against the Mongol Horde. The architecture of the church resembles numerous better preserved temples in contemporary Armenia and Georgia, including Ejmiatsin Cathedral, Kecharis, Mtskheta or Lurji Monastery.

After a Lo-Res scan of the old single-card model by Thierry Halot / Architecture Modelisme printed in 1/300.