Building the Lego Lungshan Temple of Manka, without any bricks
Lungshan Temple
Building the Lungshan Temple was a tedious task. I met some of the challenges myself. It was already difficult in and of itself, but the bigger problem was the parts. I prefer unusual colors, which is why it took me some time to acquire the parts I needed. Luckily, I had help from my fellow Lego enthusiasts. After three months and around forty thousand bricks, I finally finished.
Almost the entire temple is made up of Lego Technic.
At first I tried to build it with bricks. Because the building is symmetrical, I only had to build half before I could see where the main lines and the pillars would be. I marked the dragon pillars in red and started preparing the other bricks I would need. The walls are light gray, the rooftops dark orange, windows and fences sand green, and the drum towers and golden scrolls are pearl gold.
Working on a big project like this means you have to watch out for certain things, such as structure and proportions. Lungshan Temple is a real-life building, so you have to pay attention to the layout and dimensions. The main structure consists of the arch, front hall, main hall, and back hall. The back hall is the tallest and also the biggest pain. When building the main hall, I had to keep comparing it with the front hall I had just finished.
Miniature Jingxin Waterfall
When you’re building your own Lego creation, you have to make choices. You can change the proportions of almost anything apart from the main structure. The Jingxin Waterfall in the corner of Lungshan Temple was very difficult to recreate to scale, so I had to shrink it. In fact, there’s also a tall tree that covers some of the real-life temple, but it would be pointless to make a tall Lego tree, so I shrunk the tree too. Choices like these are rewarding, and I enjoyed overcoming these challenges.
For more content, please read Brick Journal issue no. 3.
