RE: Dream City Builder Contest, Haunted Manor O’Lan
I love the new addition! It can help formulate your city, after all.
I know I already have an entry, but I'm going to give you a building anyway.
In Terrenden, the Neví are a formidable bunch, but they managed to get involved in the first place by giving the people what they wanted and needed while at the same time turning a profit - that's how they got to be so big and powerful, they made the people WANT them!
Their buildings are designed to be multi-purpose. They have social and low-income housing (so they get the governments to support them whole-heartedly), but they also have businesses on the ground floor and high-stakes gambling and related "entertainment" in the upper levels (or maybe just below the residents... it may be a little different from place to place) and even a park on the roof. They may also have a larger casino near by, but they always do the social projects because that's their "in" - as well as their tool to influencing the local elections - if you can buy the votes of the poor in your district, after all (those votes are a lot cheaper than the votes of the rich, after all - and the poor are more numerous.)
So, that's one of my buildings.
Of course the A'mara also have their buildings which have to include special sparring rooms, classrooms, lounge with entertainment facilities, an atrium, where possible, again, rooftop gardens (common on Terrenden), living quarters for all the resident A'mara... I actually have a building plan for at least one of them, but it's not been transferred to computer yet.
Wow! That is absolutely amazing, such complexity. It sounds like your world would make a great environment for an RPG! Thank you so much for your generous comment, it is making me think about city building differently. Can’t wait to see your drawing!!!
I can't draw a building, lol. And I don't have a Neví building floor plan at this time (I am not sure if I ever will, to be perfectly honest.) I just know the concept of their buildings.
I do have the floor plan of the A'mara building as Tirry designs it for Loxos (for the sequel to Elect to Change) - If I can work out how to translate the building plan to the computer (besides scanning - it's just chicken scratches at the moment) , then I'll do it for you, but I'm really not sure because I don't yet have a program that lets me do what I want there - maybe I'll just have to bully GIMP into doing it for me...
No worries.
You know, the whole concept of designing your buildings first is like an exercise I did once when trying to work out the best size/shape of a bedroom. I was designing a bedroom for kids and trying to find the minimum space that really worked well. To do this, I made little models of the furniture that I needed in a room shared by two children of the tween age. Just on graph paper, so I was only working with footprints. I actually found that rather than a normal square, that an L-shaped room did the best job of giving the kids a bit of personal space. You could put a walk-in closet in that remaining part of your L - so that your ordinary square concept fits better in the whole house... but it worked well.
9'x12', btw, seems to be the minimum size for two kids to get along halfway well. That shape is really important - it allows either two beds side by side with a 3' gap between and dresser under the window - or it allows the two beds at a right angle to each other.
Now, if you design those two beds to have cabinetry underneath or maybe even some desk space, you make better use of your space overall than if you have, say bunk beds - because you can always put a bed above another piece of furniture, but you can't really put a dresser or desk above another!
There are also the bunk beds with a bed upstairs but a desk underneath! I love how you are thinking of the kid’s need for intimacy, an L shape could do the trick.