Historical architecture by Viator

[Viator]

St-Étienne Chapel of Guer in Britanny, FR.
Free downloaded from the Secanda webpage, model No. 16.2 v1, scaled down to 1/300.

According to the webpage info, "it is one of the oldest chapels in Brittany and, despite its simplicity and rusticity, is architecturally also one of the most interesting.
"The chapel is difficult to date because its oldest parts combine archaic characters evoking the Carolingian art to more recent characters evoking the beginnings of the Romanesque art. The opinions of various authors are quite disparate, some seeing it as a Carolingian, even Merovingian (i.e. before 750 CE), building and some other as a primitive Romanesque building of around the year 1000 CE or just before.
"The west side was extended at an unclear date and the large bays are late additions of the 17th century.
"Abandoned after the French Revolution, the chapel was used as a barn. Since 1971 it is registered as the Historical French Heritage (Monuments Historiques list)."

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While shrinking the model to 1/300 scale I removed most of gluing tabs, especially all the reinforced items were simply "butt jointed" (the walls, three stiffening transverse walls/ribs inside, the roof and the wind beams which were printed on 80 g/sqm and glued to the 120 g/sqm paper). The cross on the top was made of the photoetched railing.

[Viator]

Sometimes I feel I want to make something quick, small, simple and minimalistic, which can be completed within one evening. Like in my youth days, I didn't plan anything nor use the ruler or pen, only the scissors and glue, and few sheets of cardboards. "Let's start and let's see what will come of it." This time I found a little stone, flat on bottom side, which became an island, and I built a little castle on the top.

Later I thought of a piece of a nineteen century flat roof tile from the Romanian castle Râșnov, now being renovated (they removed 19th century additions as a part of restoration of the original look and I took few pieces as a souvenir from the debris dump), and the next day I put a small brickwork Teutonic Order castle on the top of it, adding the wooden bridge, made of match sticks divided into quarters. This time the design required to have right angles secured, so I made some measurements and markings (but the windows were drawn with a pen by hand).

These castles weren't made after any existing medieval monuments but anyway they are properly designed fourteenth century castles, so I decided to share the images in the historical architecture thread.

[Don Boose]

Splendid models of attractive buildings. I appreciate the construction notes.

Don

[Viator]

While visiting Crete (Greece) two weeks ago I scheduled a full day for Heraklion Archeological Museum and the archeological site at Knossos where A. Evans explored (and partially rebuilt) the minoan palace stone structures. I was really impressed and I decided to make a model of a part of the palace. So I chose the so called West Bastion of the Northern Entrance to the Palace (Wing) "A", where one of the most famous frescos was restored, known as "The charging bull". On the back side of the bastion the remains of a Great Hall with an annex were located. This part of a palace hadn't been rebuilt by Evans and the hall has lacking half of external walls, a roof and two columns (one can see their round bases only on the middle of the floor). I decided to include part of these rooms into the scope of work in order to show how the restored doorway looks like.

The fresco on my model was made of few pieces (because making the photograph of the whole thing is impossible due to the columns, spoiling a direct view), warped and merged together. The stone surfaces textures were made by myself after my own images taken at the Knossos site. Then the scaled down fresco and the textures were computer printed. The remaining parts were made of a coloured cardboard left unpainted or hand painted by me, except the columns (the columns shafts are made of toothpicks). The scale is, as usual, 1/300, the base is 83 by 37 mm (slightly less than a visit card). The whole model contains of 190 pieces.

[Viator]

The second model from Crete is a pair of an old byzantine-venetian style stone buildings from the harbour area of Chania, the second biggest town on the island. The ancient vernacular local architecture was influenced through the centuries by the ancient Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Turkish styles which gave it the unique look. Many of them are, however, in a very poor condition due to the recession, the conflict of a Greek orthodox church with the Moscow patriarchate and to the pandemic lockdowns in the last years (because the economical stability of the island is fully dependent on the tourism).

The model was made after my own photo image. And my additional challenge was to add the set of figures in the same poses as documented on my photo image, to make the model as similar as possible. It required making of a children's cart and few details more. However I made the simplified shop windows and the repaired second floor windows, while on the real thing they are being removed during the renovation works. The walls invisible on the image (mostly connected to other buildings) were modelled as the plain walls with no windows. The stone pattern on the walls was painted with the acrylic paints. The post of a lantern was made of a 0.8 mm wire and the lantern itself from the trapezoidal pieces cut of a transparent plastic blister. Scale : 1/300.

[Siwi]

Great work in your usual tiny scale. This has been something I've thought about doing when I return from trips and have seen interesting buildings and structures, but I get put off by the problem of trying to create the plan of the building from my photos which are taken from ground level. Maybe now I've seen it's possible to get good results I will take another look.

[Viator]

I hope you can do it!
In fact, I often do all the measurements for my models only approximately. Often I can achieve the tolerance of +/- 0.5 to 1.0 mm. But, for example, my West Bastion of Knossos shall be at least 1.5 to 2.0 mm higher and the level of the Great Hall floor shall be lifted at least 4.0 to 5.0 mm up, too. But the overall view is okay, so don't feel discouraged. You can do it!

[Viator]

"The Autumn on the Great Planes"

In the meantime, I became interested in the design of the tipi tent of the Indians of the Great American Plains. As usuall, after viewing a number of archival photographs and sketches from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as several preserved tent sheets, I decided to transfer the acquired knowledge into a paper Lakota tipi/tepee model.

I found somewhere an example of a half-circular pattern with a pair of smoke flaps, 6 m in diameter, scaled it to 1/72, cut it out and glued it to the base made of an irregularly cut plank 8 mm thick covered with the railway modeller's grass, and added the 1 mm thick sticks as a conical frame of the tent and the tripod for the fireplace, and the firewood was made of some sticks painted to look like the birchwood. The remaining details, including pins, straps, a bucket and the autumn leaves were made of paper too. The items sooty with smoke were painted with the thinned acrylic and/or with the old (half-dry) black marker.

The scale was suited to the most popular minifigures scale and it's a pity that for the moment I hadn't any Indians nor horses figures in the same scale to put it together (the IMEX Friendly Indians set will be perhaps the best).

[Don Boose]

Nicely done.