I am very lucky to receive a long out of production BrickMania Kit from my friends as a wedding gift, the Pagoda : Medieval Japanese Temple which was a 1 batch run of 20 kits by Daniel who has long stopped producing Medieval kits after this kit in 2011. I am still on the lookout of the limited run of previous 7 Medieval kits, 6 of the kits are buildings and 1 of the kit is a Ballista, do drop me a message if you happen to see any one selling at reasonable pricing.
Here’s is the Kit’s write up and brief history taken from BrickMania’s cached website.
The Pagoda is an ancient multi-tiered building of religious importance that can be found all across east Asia, where many examples are still standing whose constructions dates back more than a thousand years. All pagodas have an odd number of floors and were built to house valuable religious relics, and were commonly part of a larger Buddhist temple complex.
While most Asian pagoda’s are made of stone and masonry, the Japanese built theirs entirely of wood in order to better withstand earthquakes and typhoons. Each level is built as a box of 12 pillars, with each level decreasing in size towards the apex of the structure, and the weight of each floor counterbalanced by an expansive tiled roof.
Kit Details
BrickMania’s Pagoda Medieval Japanese Temple (007)
Year: 2011
Minifigs: 1
Pieces: 1552
RRP: USD $395
The usual binded instructions & certificate.
The build itself is separated into 4 sections, the base level, 2nd level, 3rd level and finally the roof piece.
The Base level.
The 2nd level.
The 3rd level.
The roof piece.
The completed model.
After thoughts:
The overall build is quite straightforward. The technique of stacking various plates to form the contours of the roofing and the use of the red plates to form the beams of the roof support is wonderfully executed and does shows the amount of research that went into the design of the build. Given the size of the model, it is no surprise that the interior is bare. I might one day expand the base and make a 9-storey pagoda with interior furnishing, I just might…
I must really thank my friends for this wedding gift as this BrickMania Kit is definitely on my LEGO wishl(ful)ist.
Hope you have enjoyed this. Thank you for reading!