Fabulous Architecture
Throughout Canterlot City, most of the citizens were busy going about another typical day. For a certain few others, however, this was about to become a rather significant day. The final repairs to the damages caused by Sunset Shimmer’s attack over much of the city had just been completed, and a crowd had gathered around the front of Canterlot Museum — the final building to be repaired — to witness the unveiling of the new facade of the building. Standing near the front of that crowd was one of the six girls who had saved the city from that dreadful attack so many weeks ago.
Rarity was always rather fond of attending public events — if only to embrace a good opportunity to show off one of her latest fashion designs. For today’s event, she chose to wear a simple red dress with long sleeves, along with a wide-brimmed hat with a simple yellow feather sticking out of it. On her minifig body, this dress took the form of that red color on her torso and the entirety of her arms, with her legs replaced with a steep-sloped piece. The detailing printed on the front and back of the torso, along with the front of the “legs”, consisted of various lines and curves to enhance her features.
A podium had been set up in front of the currently-covered front of the building, and behind that podium stood the mayor of Canterlot City — a woman with tan skin, grey hair, and wore small glasses that rested just below her eyes. Now that the crowd had gathered, she lightly tapped the microphone a couple times to bring everyone’s attention to her before she began her speech. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “As mayor of this wonderful city, I am pleased to announce that, after many weeks of hard work, all of the physical damages from Sunset Shimmer’s failed assault have finally been repaired!” The crowd applauded at this for a few seconds before the mayor continued. “To mark this accomplishment, we are now gathered here in front of Canterlot Museum, which suffered such extensive damage that the entire facade had to be completely rebuilt. With this unveiling, I sincerely hope that we can now put that terrible event behind us and move on with our peaceful lives.” The mayor gestured towards the covered building as she finished, “And now, I present to you: the new Canterlot Museum!”
The crowd applauded and cheered loudly and enthusiastically as the massive shroud fell away. However, the cheering quickly died down once everyone actually saw the new building. Aside from a basic door and couple windows, the exterior consisted of nothing more than a featureless grey wall. It was arguably one of the dullest architectural designs imaginable.
Rarity decided to speak up on behalf of the crowd. “This is the new facade for our beloved museum?” she asked in disbelief. “How could the architect come up with something so… bland?”
“Architects, actually,” the mayor pointed out, now speaking with less enthusiasm. “Neither of them could agree on anything, so they were ultimately forced to settle on a purely functional design.”
As if to prove this statement, the two architects in question — who were standing near the left corner of the building — immediately began bickering with each other. “I told we should’ve gone with a Gothic design,” argued the first architect, who wore a hardhat and had a short black beard on his face.
“How many times do I have to say this? That would never fit in with this city!” argued the other architect, who also wore a hardhat but had a large auburn mustache on his face. “We should’ve gone with an Art Nouveau design.”
“Are you nuts?! This isn’t the Steampunk Region!”
“Well this isn’t the Castle Region, either!”
As the two architects continued to argue, the mayor simply shook her head in disapproval and told the crowd, “This is why there were so many delays on this particular project.”
Rarity rolled her eyes and let out a loud agitated sigh. If this kind of behavior between these two was the reason behind days and weeks of delays, then it was clear that somebody had to set them straight. She decided that enough was enough, and marched right up to the bickering architects. “You two should be ashamed of yourselves!” she scolded, immediately bringing a momentary end to their arguing. “Thanks to your bickering and squabbling, the upstanding citizens of Canterlot City no longer have a museum they can be proud of.”
“Well he started it,” argued the bearded architect, pointing at the other guy.
“Me?! You’re the one who submitted your dumb proposal, first!” shot back the other architect.
“Stop this madness right this instant!” shouted Rarity, which immediately brought total silence to the area. After taking a slow deep breath to compose herself, she calmly said, “Honestly, if this is the best you two could do, I would go so far as to say that even I would’ve come up with a better design.”
“Oh really?” asked the first architect skeptically as he crossed his arms. “You think you could do better than us?”
“As a matter of fact…” began Rarity, before throwing off her fancy dress in one fluid motion, revealing that she was still wearing her typical wardrobe underneath. She then removed her hat/hair piece and quickly replaced it with her typical hair piece. “I do,” she finished, just before snatching her dress before it could hit the ground. She quickly folded it up and handed it and the hat/hair piece over to the mayor as she asked, “Could you be a dear and hold these for me? Thank you.”
Now that she was ready to get creative, she turned her attention back to the two architects and asked, “Do you happen to have any spare parts with which I could use to make improvements to the museum’s facade?”
“Yeah, the pile’s right over there,” replied the second architect, pointing at a rather large pile of various Lego pieces that had been left near the right corner of the building.
Astonished by the huge size of that pile, Rarity could only narrow her eyes at the architects and mutter, “You two really did settle for a bare-minimum agreement, didn’t you?” Before either of the architects could speak up, she immediately held up her hand and said, “Nuh-uh-uh! I do not want to hear another word on the matter.” She then turned her back to them and walked off in a huff.
Once Rarity’s dignified march brought her to the pile, she quickly began inspecting the pieces available for possible ideas. “Let’s see…” she mumbled to herself as she started lightly digging around. “Which pieces could I use to build with?”
After a little digging, the pile shifted slightly, causing one round piece to tumble past Rarity and land on the ground nearby. She looked back at that piece and noticed that it was a four-stud cylinder — which basically took up the same space as a standard four-stud brick. What really caught her attention was that it was white and had vertical ridges all the way around its side. For someone with an eye for detail like Rarity, it was immediately obvious what kind of structure such a piece could be used for. A quick glance around the rest of the pile confirmed that there were many more of these particular pieces.
“Idea!” exclaimed Rarity in a sing-song voice. As she jumped up towards the top of the pile, her body quickly changed into its half-pony form — which included pony ears, longer hair at the back, and a unicorn horn at the front of her hair piece. Although the crowd was awed by this sight, Rarity paid it no mind, as she was too focused on bringing her idea to reality.
“Let’s start with some of these…” said Rarity as she began quickly tossing many pieces behind her back towards the front entrance of the museum. “Add on a few of these…” Remarkably, almost like magic, every single piece she tossed landed right in the exact locations to fit together perfectly, and not once did she even glance back to look at her progress. All of the pieces were literally falling right into place.
“Let’s not forget these…” continued Rarity as she now added on the pieces that inspired her, which quickly came together to form a row of tall columns. Next, she discovered some white one-stud plates with a vertical round connection sticking out of one side. “Ooh! These would make spectacular Ionic columns!” she exclaimed with giddiness as she threw those pieces on top of the columns.
“Just need to build an entablature to top it all off…” continued Rarity as she threw more pieces on top of the finished columns, essentially putting a roof over the entrance area. “A few final decorative parts around the frieze, and…” She threw on the last few pieces along the edge of that new roof, still managing to toss those pieces in exactly the right places. Once the entire assembly was complete — and the pile had been reduced to less than half of its original size — Rarity finally turned around to see her creation as she proudly proclaimed, “Complete!”
The crowd immediately erupted into an excited round of applause at the newly-improved facade to Canterlot Museum. Rarity had built a Classical Greek structure around the main entrance. Although it didn’t extend further around the building, it was still spectacular in its own right.
“Well done, Rarity! Well done, indeed!” exclaimed the mayor excitedly as she clapped like everyone in the crowd, holding the dress and hat under her arm as she did so. As the cheering began to calm down, she added, “And I must say, that was especially impressive, considering your new look!”
Rarity’s feeling of accomplishment was quickly replaced with confusion when she heard that last statement. As someone who took her personal appearance very seriously, she quickly pulled out a hand mirror to look at herself. Although her face was unchanged — thank goodness — she was quick to notice the pony ears and the unicorn horn. “How in the world did that happen?” she quietly asked herself. As soon as she had asked that question, her body morphed back to her typical minifig form.
Now that the pony-like changes to her body were gone, Rarity looked at herself in the mirror, glanced over at the structure she had just built in a matter of seconds, then back to her reflection. She began to get the feeling that there might be a connection between her magical form and her creative talents. Knowing that she wasn’t the only one to have such a magical pony form, she muttered to herself, “I may need to discuss this with my friends.”
“Thank you again for you generous assistance, Rarity,” praised the mayor as she handed Rarity back her dress and hat. “Your talents in architecture are quite remarkable.”
“Actually, much of my architectural knowledge comes from a single elective course I took in college,” admitted Rarity. “I tend to focus most of my creative talents on fashion.”
“Nonetheless, you still did a lot better than those two,” remarked the mayor, gesturing back at the two architects.
“I must admit, that’s some nice work you did there,” said the bearded architect.
“Yeah, that’s a really nice design,” added the other architect. He then turned to the other guy and remarked, “Definitely a lot better that what you came up with.”
The first architect quickly shot back, “Well at least it wasn’t as bad as yours!”
“No, yours was the worst!” argued the second architect.
As the two architects quickly started bickering again, the mayor simply sighed and facepalmed before muttering, “That is the last time I commission those two together on a project.”