8404 Diorama Studios

Our first building is a relatively built stock Hansa USA kit, Middle East Building #4 which is a two story structure; the ground floor is a commercial space; the second floor is two tiny apartments with a balcony overhanging the lower level. The design is a fairly common one, the commercial space could be a single or double occupancy. For our first piece of real estate, it’s going to be a single occupancy store. Selling what, I have no idea at the moment.

The apartments in the 1:1 world would be at best tiny studio apartments, not a great place to call home if you like space – but it beats living on the streets. My plan is to just divide the space and wing it where it concerns details. Clearly a case where less will be more. Hey, they’ll be fine for little plastic people. They don’t complain much, and if they do I can always use new volunteers for experiments in the laboratory.

The majority of the other buildings will be of similar construction, inspired by – but not replicating pictures. One thing I don’t want to do is attempt to recreate that place; you can achieve the look, but not the feel, the smell, the emotion that was Fallujah. I want my version to be the generic stereotypical sh**hole you picture when you hear the name. Although calling it a sh**hole is actually an insult to them… we had a Corpsman on my second tour who had come to the U.S. from some really bad place in Mexico; he was in the aid station one afternoon on a resupply run and he said that Fallujah actually made the place he grew up in look pretty nice in comparison. OUCH!

There aren’t many truly high rise buildings in Fallujah, most buildings average 2-3 stories tall. Combination residential/commercial occupancies like the one above are fairly common as are security gates, bars on windows and doors, walls around homes. The area has had a rough reputation for a long time, shaking down caravans and hijacking trucks was once a fact of life in Al Anbar Province, so long as it didn’t belong to your tribe (or a friend’s tribe). When Saddam was in power his regime tolerated these things in return for a share of the action. Stay tuned to this space for the next installment on buildings!