Building Well: the Street, the Square and the Style of the Commonwealth

Comrades, anyone can pile up blocks. To build well is to build for the people who will live, work and meet in what you raise, and for the comrades who will extend it after you. This lecture is about planning, light, materials and the style in which the Commonwealth builds.

Plan before you place

Walk the site first. Note the water, the slopes, the rock, where the rail or the road will come in. Then sketch the town:

A centre. Put the town hall on a square, with the public buildings around it. The square is where the people gather; give it room.
Quarters by purpose. Workshops, smelters and the mine entrance together, near the resources and the rail, away from the homes. Homes near the restaurant and the farms. Guards where raiders would come from.
Room to grow. Every hut grows with its levels. Leave space around each, and leave empty plots for buildings the colony does not need yet.

The build tool shows the full footprint of a blueprint before you confirm it. Use it to try the plan on the ground.

Streets

Streets join the town together and let citizens (and you) move quickly.

Make them three to five blocks wide, of gravel, stone or path blocks (use a shovel on grass to make a path).
Mark them with lamps and kerbs, so no one walks off into a field.
Bridge rivers and ravines properly; a colony cut in two by water wastes hours of work.
MineColonies also offers decorations (walls, fences, fountains and the like) through the build tool, which the builder raises like any hut.

Light

Since the caves and cliffs update, hostile creatures spawn only where there is no block light at all. Light every street, every room and every corner of a roof, and a town becomes safe at night. Lanterns on posts along the street, lamps in every room, torches under the eaves. Light is also the cheapest defence you have.

Materials

A builder asks for a great deal of the ordinary: logs, planks, cobblestone, stone bricks, glass, slabs and stairs. Before you start a large building:

Look at the builder's request list and gather in advance.
Set up the supply: a tree farm and a mechanical saw for planks, a cobblestone generator and a furnace line for stone and glass. The Professor of Engineering shows how (/cw lecture engineering 1).
Some styles use decorative blocks from Domum Ornamentum, made in the architect's cutter from two materials of your choice. The builder names the block he needs.
Keep building materials in the warehouse, where the courier can reach them.

Common works and personal dwellings

The Laws of the Commonwealth apply to building too. A citizen's dwelling and belongings may not be entered, taken or damaged without leave (section 2.1). Common works (the stores, the machines, the farms, the rails) belong to all, and damaging them is a breach (section 1.2). Build your own home where the colony has room for it, not on a comrade's plot, and put common works where everyone can reach them.

The style of the Commonwealth

The Academy recommends a sober, dignified style for public buildings, sometimes called socialist classicism:

Symmetry and order. A clear front on the square, a central entrance, the same on both sides.
Columns and steps. Public buildings are raised a little on steps, with columns or pilasters at the front: they belong to the people, and should look it.
Stone and light colours (stone bricks, smooth stone, quartz, white concrete), with red and gold for banners, the red star and the doors of state buildings.
Wide avenues and open squares rather than crooked lanes; monuments to the work of the plan.

Homes may be simpler and warmer: timber, brick, gardens. What matters is that the town reads as one work of many hands.

A checklist

Is the site agreed with the council and the neighbours?
Is there room for every hut to grow?
Are the streets wide, lit and connected?
Are the materials gathered, or a line set up to make them?
Is every room lit?
Are your comrades added to the colony, so they can help build it?

Questions: /cw ask professor-architecture <question>. For research at the University, see the Director of Research: /cw lecture research 1.