The continuing story of the creation of Tatsumi no machi.
The surprise? New land to the south-west of us, and the hard work? You guessed it ~ the building of the western annexe and it's walkway!
Having surveyed the landscape and brought it to a similar level as our original parcel, we set about planning the layout. The western annexe was fairly easy to plan, being similar to the eastern one, but the walkway from the western annexe had to end in a 'tsuridono' ~ fishing platform / picnic area. The garden layout for shinden zukuri architecture is fairly consistent, an artificial lake with islands reached by small bridges ~ and so the work began...

First job the western courtyard, followed by the western annexe itself.
Here are the finished products...



This was followed by the western walkway which includes a 'chuumon' or inner gate to allow people already inside the palace grounds to enter the inner courtyard and access the shinden.



Finally, the tsuridono ~ a feature which is proving to be very popular with our new and regular visitors alike!


As you can see from the photograph, we have completed the artificial lake and populated it with some flora and fauna. It was quite a marathon, but the major constructions are complete. Just a little adding of detail and final tweaking to do. All that is left to add to tatsumi no machi to complete it, is the addition of the eastern walkway, but not today *^_^*

Till the next time...

Well I can't log on to SL so I'm writing the latest update on the building of Tatsumi no Machi. We left the construction at the completion of the shinden, so today we progress to the linking courtyard between the shinden and higashi no tai. We already had an idea of the layout, but the measurements proved to be a bit tricky since we used a 1:1 model, substituting second life metres for real life ones. It was a bit of a squeeze on the eastern side because we are located on an island and therefore limited in space, but we managed it! *^_^*
Here is the linking courtyard, looking towards the front of the palace from the watadono.


Next, we started on the eastern building (higashi no tai). Drawing on our experience gained from the building of the shinden, the main structure was quickly completed and attached to the linking courtyard. At last we could take a break ~ having run out of space and pushed our prims to the limit. We settled down for a quiet period of tweaking and refining details. It wasn't quiet for long though, as word soon began to spread about our project. Visitors started arriving on an hourly basis. It really is wonderful being able to share our project with so many people!
For the next post ~ a surprise and a lot of hard work!