Lobby

Although I thought I'd defer any detailing of individual floors until I got to that stage with the Hartley Tower, I didn't think I could avoid adding the lobby. At the very least, the lobby floor would help add strength to the structure as did the roof and the upper floors, and help remove a little wall flaring at the base.

The lobby is rudimentary. It's just a floor, elevator block, ceiling, and some lights.

The panels are cut from 0.040" styrene. I looked up some marble and elevator door images on the internet, printed them on paper, and then glued the pieces to the styrene panels. I should have added things like elevator controls, floor numbers, and a directory, but I felt rushed and decided to delve into those details when I build the Hartley tower.

My lobby doesn't model what's in the prototype. It's just a mockup of my impression of the ones found in modern highrises: ones that use various types of marble and stainless steel. 

While I was building mine I watched the movie Towering Inferno - an Irwin Allen disaster classic from 1974. Early in the movie we see Roberts, the building's architect played by Paul Newman, elevatoring down from the helipad along with the building's developer, played by Willam Holden, and then entering what appears to be the lobby of developer's company offices. Wow! It's a symphony of burnt orange and earth tones, a far cry from the mausoleum aesthetic of my lobby. I'm keeping all that funky '70s style in the back of my mind when it comes time to detail the Hartley Tower.

Lighting is via a strip of LEDs housed in an overhead light box. There are some holes punched in the floor of the elevator box so the wires can leave the building. And a row of holes were punched into the ceiling below the light box to try to give uniform lighting across the marble expanse. 

It took a bit of fiddling to get the lobby inside, but in the end it fit snuggly. Some MEK-based solvent was used to bond the lobby to the structure.

The aluminum bar with the holes is a bar clamp I used to keep things stable and aligned as I glued everything in place.

And that's that for the lobby.

Next up, detailing the front and rear walls.