MOC: Villa Great Agano

Villa Great-Agano was designed by builder-architects Väinämöinen's House-building OY AB. It was commissioned by former samurai Miko Katanai and features elements from medieval Japanese fortresses and Finnish Art Nouveu villas (the name refers to Villa Suur-Merijoki by Gesellius-Lindgren-Saarinen, as well as river Agano in Japan). The cobblestone base is made with Finnish granite from the wilderlands of Kainuu, where the boss of Väinämöinen's House Building OY AB had bit of a incident with their younger rival building company House-Builders Joukahainen. But that's another story, featuring a swamp.

In other words, this was an entry for House Exhibition contest on HupiCon 2018, the successor of Model Expo, and our LUG's biggest annual show. It went pretty good, not much points on the audience voting but fourth place on LUG member voting, and I was awarded with London Skyline set. The model was built during two evening, maybe 8 hours or so, which I think is quite fast. I was rather busy before HupiCon, due to massive City Blocks I had to finish, and some schoolwork that had to be done.

But the school year is now behind, and I have three months of free time. I actually returned from my two-week trip around Italy, Czech Republic and Germany with my girlfriend three days ago - it was great time and I bough several bricks, one small cup and three bigs from LEGO Stores with some sand green, and also some used goodies from fan-based stores in Prague and Berlin. Good time.

Back to the build! As I mentioned, it's an odd mix of old Japanese fortress and Finnish Jugendstil villa. It was going to be more like the latter but I began with the foundations, overlapping those boat studs (marvellous pieces marvellous pieces) it very fragile but cool-looking fashion (there's a 1x1 round plate in the middle of overlapping plates, that, if applied right, connects on the "tube" of the plate in the middle of three boat studs; works on random plates and is frustrating to apply). The shape looked like those samurai castles and quite liked it. The tower is from aforementioned Villa Suur-Merijoki. It is rather stout, as the contest had a height restriction of 25 bricks. The Japanese feel was even more enhanced with the vertical lines on the walls, as well as those lanterns, steep stairs leading to the main entrance, and the shape of the roof (even though it's quite basic). I added couple of statues and bonsai trees near the stairs to underscore the influences. And yes, there's a garage inside, with it's door visible on the back. In all, it's not a house I'd design in real life (architect student, remember?) but it was fun, fast build, with some experimental techniques.

-Eero