Asian Temple

I've always had a bit of fascination with Asian architecture, and I think it's a testament to the flexibility of the treehaus blocks that I've managed to find ways to use them to evoke a style that they weren't ever intended for. 

Quite some time back I worked on a pagoda style temple like this in minecraft which I really never finished.   But the study I put into it was helpful when I began experimenting with an Asian aesthetic using the treehaus blocks.

Before I worked on this big temple, I built a number of smaller structures as practice and was surprised at how nice they looked, and at the various techniques that could be used to build these types of buildings. 

I began building larger, and had a pretty good sized temple that was similar to the upper structure you see in this build.  That got me thinking even larger and I started seriously contemplating a full fledged pagoda temple, but it wasn't really until I figured out the way I wanted to do the roof that I decided to give it a serious attempt.

Had I known just how close I would come to using every one of those slope blocks in my collection, I might have thought twice before building it quite this large.  Luckily I had just enough.  If I'd had more I think the design might have looked a bit nicer with a couple more layers.  Still I think it turned out very nice over all. 

The third "story"  roof was actually the toughest because by that point I'd basically used up my whole supply of slope type blocks.  I struggled with this for awhile, and almost tore it all down but after thinking about it a few days and experimenting with some other block types I came up with something that turned out pretty good after all.  It's kind of a happy accident that the roof on each level has it's own style, had I had more blocks it may have been more uniform, but as it is I was forced to come up with some different techniques and the finished build is more interesting because of it. 

Another new feature I made use of in this build is the lights.  I was inspired to give this a try by some images of wood blocks I'd come across on Amazon.  The blocks themselves weren't really compatible with the blocks I build with, but the lighting made the models look really beautiful.  When it came time to photograph this temple, I decided to see what kind of lights I could find on the web.  What I came up with were some simple led lights that are primarily intended for putting inside balloons or paper lanterns for decorations at weddings and the like.  These were quite inexpensive and small enough to hide pretty easily inside the building.  The main thing was I didn't need to worry about wires, since the structure was already built and it would have been incredibly difficult to weave wired lights through it without knocking it over.