Fortuna Journal
by Erik Olson

This is my journal from the early stages of building the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia (ca 100 BC.) (Praeneste ITALY, now Palestrina.)

The finished version was entered in Erik Wilson's Ancient Lego Building Contest.

This project was begun on 8/23/98.

Before the eventual design of Fortuna came about, I had built and rebuilt over and over. These are snapshots of some of the trial stages. (click on the small images below to enlarge.)

8/23/98 From the first night

of building until 4am, this post and lintel design emerged. Later it was completely replaced with a larger scale design.

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8/28/98 A little more...

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9/8/98 This coin

is a later depiction of Fortuna. Silver denarius of Hadrian (117-138 AD) (reverse shown) (inscription below seated Fortuna reads FORT RED, or Fortuna Redux) This was the first of my ancient coin collection.

9/11/98 Old Yields To New

After trying out alternatives to the post and lintel unit, the longer, more graceful arcade is created. The old one is in the background. I started buying the $10 red-silver buckets to get white arches (2 in each), unsure of how far I would go. Two white arches came from my old collection (about 1979).

The new arcade construction

is on a scale 50% larger than the previous approach. After this point, I am building only tiers 4-7 of the historical complex. Before, I had tried to include the 3rd. The 3rd tier was the row of thin pillars, including two scooped-out "lectern" galleries, and in the later views you can see that the scoop railing has dropped to the level.

9/22/98 Catching Up On Photos...

I have worked out the large-scale dimensions on paper, for the large patio and parts around it. I try to fit the scale of things around 32x32 baseplates. The auditorium is at the head of the patio and is nearing completion. One of the first semicircular forms, daunting. I am constructing tiers of the sanctuary separately, which will stack up in the final complex. From the theatre seating level upward is tiers 6 and 7 and it will rest on the pillars of tier 5.

I thought I had run out of bricks last night, but, since I have to tear down and rebuild everything at least once, the third time the auditorium took less bricks.

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9/26/98 Everything you saw of the auditorium was torn down again

and rebuilt! Can you spot the differences?

By 9/26/98 the project had reached an encouraging stage

and I knew I was going to press on. I had finished this auditorium and began to get a sense of accomplishment. The auditorium's left tower (seen below) was ready to join with the forum wing (see 9/27 entry.)

9/27/98 Today I went to Target

and got 3050 more bricks. Graig Donini came over and helped on the walls, we made great progress. A compromise decision has been made to cut out one row of baseplates (32 studs) from the middle of the patio floor. This changes the rough dimensions of the whole from 5x3 to 5x2. (This is a good decision because the middle third has no unique features and would be wasteful in parts and space.) We completed this, the left wing!

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10/4 Yeah! White Bricks!

Mathew Stephen came through with the first of two big shipments of white bricks! 5000 in all!

Here, the side tower has been ripped off the theatre in order to properly build the platform around and behind the auditorium.

I employed a ruler to establish the outside concentric circles and to decide where to plant the columns. The innermost circles were sketched on graph paper with a compass. I would not recommend the ruler approach.

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The base of the collonade is 6 bricks thick. The first three are short piles and gaps, the next two are crisscrossed beams, then this supports the solid floor.

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10/16 Only a builder knows the rush

I felt when I lifted the auditorium and collonade on a board, and slid it into its place atop the center of the forum.

10/18 Even after I had sent in my contest entry

I decided to complete the right forum wing, because 6 new red buckets came in the mail. However, a grove of trees had sprung up in that space.

I've a couple of things to say about Lego building.

If I may...

It certainly is easier to get building when you have a definite goal, and a real-life building to imitate is a pretty good model. When I was a kid, I made original things like dream houses or functional castles, or I built to an unusual concept, like a Lego swimming pool or dockable spacecraft or (one of my happy memories) a stack of different "apartment" terraces and stairways that just kept rising.

By the time I was 14, all that fun was completely replaced by computer programming, and, I might add, the sense of rightness and balance and sanity (that I had had in playing) became hard to come by. Fortunately, I turned out alright. This project proved to me that only the imitation/reconstruction use of Lego has any appeal for me at the moment. It's nice to find that something about Lego still appeals to me, 14 years later.

About the parts used in this building:

Nearly all the pieces came from widely available brick buckets. The 1997 4128s (red bucket) provided blue plates, white railings, and especially green slopes. I started with 2, ordered 4 more from Lego Shop-at-home, picked up a few strays, and finally bought 6 on sale during the last days of the contest. Mathew Stephen sold me his green slopes from about 5 buckets. I used 3 giant gray baseplates and 13 large blue plates (In one, I had to cut a hole, can you tell?) I also got 4 blue silver bins (25th Anniversary) 5 blue-silver buckets and about 11 red silver buckets. The red-silver bucket has 2 white arches and lots of green plates. Mathew also sold me the white bricks only, from nearly 33 blue-silver buckets!

That's a lot of bricks, at least 20,000, and about half of those are in Fortuna. So if you read this far, there are two morals. One, you can never have too many bricks (listen up, parents!) and two, you don't have to have rare bricks to make a very pretty model.

My next project has already begun... (this turned out to be the Roman Villa from Estree sur mer)

Years later:

1998 was a great year for getting basic Lego bricks in the Anniversary tubs and buckets. By 2000 it was becoming tough if not impossible to get a versatile collection of basic parts like this. The problem continues as of 2002.

Fortuna Links

ANCIENT-THEME.com