Viking Modular

Viking Modular is a building system devised by Tweetabix.

This page is a Wiki version of the building code document which is also available in two in-game books and a PDF.

Theory (copied from the Manifesto)

Prelude

I got the idea for Viking Modular one day back when the Vikings were still part of the Kingdom of Norlund. I was reading a RL book (nerd!) called Architecture on the Carpet, all about the history of construction toys. It's not the best book tbh. Anyway, it was talking about Lott's Bricks.

This was a 1930s building toy which could be used in a modular fashion.

Lotts Bricks were supposed to be simple so you could make infinite combinations- modularity like we see in Minecraft today.

But as time went on, they introduced so many specialist parts that it became less modular.The wonder of Lotts Bricks is the very small palette of blocks and the wide variety of buildings that can be made with them.

Lotts Bricks represented the Arts and Crafts architecture movement.

Arts and Crafts was a call to minimalism, a romanticisation of the pure and simple. "The simplicity united with the plain architectural elements to make a visual whole."British socialist William Morris was an architect in his day job. Simple living that involved the use of head and hands, and everyone having enough but not too much, was as much the aim of Morris' socialism as his attitude to architecture.Morris published this in his magazine, The Commonweal. A Commonwealth suggests that if aspirations are limited and living is simple, then everyone can have enough.

I and some other Vikings, were in the Commonwealth back on Civcraft 2.0. What a coincidence...

Other inspirations

All creatives will agree:RESTRICTIONS drive lNNOVATIONS.

Just look at how CivCorp run a stock exchange using shop chests, or how Tritonio runs ESTA using book-and-quills!

The second source of inspiration for Viking Modular is Bjarke Ingels, a Danish architect, and his firm the BIG Group. There's a good Netflix documentary about them. Most of interest to me is his VM Buildings in Copenhagen.

Yes. That's right. The Viking Modular name is a pun on VM. I don't think we're even playing as vikings anymore! I just love a good pun, don't you?

To improve the efficiency of the elevators, and allow residents to meet more of their neighbours, as well as having more living space, Bjarke designed VM to have just one corridor every three floors.

To do this, Bjarke only designed three types of apartments, which fit neatly around each other in an interlocking pattern.

These apartments also all include a double-floor height space, to allow apartment dwellers a feeling of roominess.

Finally, I took a little inspiration from a video by AndyisYoda on YouTube, who showed a modular type system. However mine is much stricter than his version. Why, you might ask?

Bastions and Mixed Use

Well you might be surprised to learn that IRL, building codes actually control much more of our lives than we might expect.

In America this is more pronounced than in Europe. But property rights also get in the way of interesting architecture.

For example, American cities' minimum parking requirements of usually 3 parking spaces for one parking space sized indoor space, means one building ends up taking up four times as much space as it needs to because of all the car parking.

This leads to a sprawled out, flat, low rise city design, which then bakes in car dependency.

In many American cities, beautiful mixed use developments are actually banned because of these laws.

Many of the coolest cities incorporate multi-layered elements. For example, check out Edinburgh, with its bridge-streets and valley-streets, and sealed up "closes" from the middle ages. It's often not clear where one property ends and another begins.

I've always been surprised that in Minecraft, a world where moving on the Y axis is about as easy as moving the X and Z access, we don't see more multi layered housing. IRL, pedestrians will always prefer a flat path to a slope or stairs.

This is even more so on CivRealms, where cheap gold blocks mean moving up the Y axis is in fact easier and quicker than moving on the X and Z axis. And it would be so, were it not for...

BASTIONS!

Bastions protect everything from the level that they are placed, upwards- usually they are placed at bedrock, because why hesitate?

Towns can of course share bastions, but they have to trust each other.

Bottom up Bastions dissuade players from building interesting mixed use multi layer developments on top of one another. There are only a few examples of this type of building on CivRealms, such as CivTopia and Neo Boris.

However, these places have a complete lack of a building code so end up with a kind of look of chaos.What if, like the Model T Ford, you could build anything you wanted, so long as it was allowed in the building code?

You are also free to develop your own code. It's open source!

Implementation

The town in progress from the WTC

Untitled VM Town Near WTC

The first VM town is being developed north of the World Trade Centre in Yggdrasil, near the Norlund border.

One of the streets has been converted into a part of the King's Road project, which now runs straight through the town in a fitting manner.

Due to a disagreement with Yggdrasil management, a conclusion was arrived at wherein the town is restricted to 9 blocs.

Tweetabix hopes this town will serve as a model for other towns using the code.