Read the previous post - designing the three other areas - here.

This question is easy - you begin building! While most people would have worked out a scale - I didn’t even have my Lego when I began building - I just dived right in. I knew that my city set had to sit on a bench that was 1m wide. So I made the set 80cm wide, allowing for some margin at the sides of the bench. I knew the bench was 50cm deep, so I made my city 25cm deep; pretty much because that seemed like a good depth. The height of the floors was 8cm; again because it seemed like a good depth. And I split each area of the city into 20cm wide segments (80cm wide divided by 4 = 20cm each).

The first thing I did was build the box. Every measurement I made I recorded - not only needing it for later, I knew I should also document everything since I was making it up on the fly.

 The box was easy. Cut up some core flute to the right sizes, glue together with some clear-drying PVA. I knew I also had to make the city set extremely stable for transport, so I got some small balsa blocks and glued them in each corner of the box, and also at each corner of my four areas - giving the floors something to rest on. Once it was all made up, I measured out my floors.

Here we have the box upside-down. You can see that the second floor has been attached, and the balsa blocks secured to the underneath of the floor and sides of the box.

Read the next post - making the floors - here.