gestaltung von wände
welcome to a new edition of bella italia! we are in the middle of our new italy theme world on the amalfi coast. why are we on the amalfi coast? because it is a true masterpiece, what gerhard dauscher, our "no1 master of model building" as i like to call him, he, who plans and leads everything regarding our model building, has planned here.
it's incredible! imagine us all sitting down together and creating really long lists. "think about italy" "what could we build there?" and we all have pictures in our mind and imagine things to be like this or like that, but we are unable to turn it into a plan or to transport our visual ideas to the model builders.
for this gerhard locks himself into a room. for the older theme worlds it took him one or two months, here it took one year! we've often asked him "what are you doing all this time?" it also takes a lot of time when a new pope is elected and it was a little similar with him. suddenly white smoke emerged and there stood gerhard with "his plan"!
we had a look at it and said "okay...well... ..it looks like italy!" ... but we still couldn't really see it. what exactly makes "our italy" so special? and now, one and a half years after we started building here, at the amalfi coast, we can see the masterpiece he had in mind.
we see why this is so elaborate. why it took seven or eight times as long as a square meter in the first theme worlds you can probably answer best. so, please explain to us why did you need a year to plan all this? "well, the first difficulty is to get to know the country.
you have to find out which regions does the country have? and what is interesting for us to buiild? and then, next you go to south italy and discover the amalfi coast. and you discover "wow, this is gigantic!" you want to rebuild everything in it!
but we have to limit ourselves to the siginficant buildings which we want to show. and you also have to get an understanding of the people and country. you have to understand the people. how do they live? why does their house look like this? just like we built it here...
what's the story behind this? a building's aura... this you have to understand and you understand best when you are there, on location. but how do you sketch it onto a blue print? you have an idea, you put it onto paper and you convey it to the model builders and they realize it then?
i can precisely imagine like that. all those pictures i have been looking at are somehow mixed in my head. i can't really explain how. just look through here. did you know before, that this view through here (to audience) you really have to see this,
this is sensational! you look through all these bridges. when you stand a bit to the side you can look around the corner. and from the other side you can also look around the corner. from over there you see more of this angle. was this what you imagined it to be? or are you surprised yourself
how beautiful this view turned out? of course these were the spots i was looking for. and i like being out in nature a lot myself. and i really like walking along a canyon. you can't see all the way through but you know back there is more to come, maybe there is a big rock blocking the canyon or something like that.
i find that really fascinating. i do have these pictures in my head, i want to build a very narrow canyon where you can't see everything at first glance. i want a rock to be hiding things, for instance a house behind it, or a scenery at the beach. and then there are these pictures: "this is how i imagine this mountain here to be",
but the specific image is created during the building process. do you remember when i came and said that i didn't like the color of this mountain? yes. remember what you told me? you said "frederik, be patient!" i am not good at being patient. and back then i thought "man,
i have some different pictures in my head!". and today everything looks as it should. exactly as it should. the color in the front is different from the one back there. and together it looks so natural! how do you do that? well, it's like that: building such a model landscape is a process
and you start in one little corner and experiment with the colors and find out you are headed the right way. but we could go a little lighter with this color or darker later on. this helps us in the rest of the landscape to keep the changes under control. but it was always crucial to me to have a landscape like a painting.
not only copying cold hard realism but dipping it into colors which fascinate and create a beautiful atmosphere. well, it's one thing to have these colors in your head, and another to transport the information to our great wunderland coworkers. some sensational people built all this. all this time they felt that
they understood the image and added their personal touch to it, how they thought it to be. in the end it became so homogeneous with so many great people working together. how do you conduct all this? that is indeed a little miracle, how to convey something like this. first it's a lot of talking
and showing pictures, describing atmospheres. "dark canyon" "overgrown and mossy" or "rough" or "creepy", you have to be afraid when you look in there. these are some very important definitions with which we work here. and the miraculous thing that happens then
is, that the people take this picture and absorb it into their heads. but people have different pictures. don't they have to match? those are easy to compare during the building process. we agree on the colors, the basic color scheme gets defined in which the people can move about. the mountains are chiselled after pictures
so you can copy from there. and then we swap places. sometimes we simply move the people around, so it is mixed all through the mountain. in any case it is fascinating to watch. and we know it works. we see it every day. but we want to take you on this journey. should you come to the wunderland
don't just look at the finished things but watch the model builders at work. that is something very special. and gerhard will show you how special it is. please show us the highlights of the amalfi coast. okay, let's go. the biggest challenge is the sculpting of the rock. it should not only look true to original,
but more beautiful, like a fairy tail, more exciting. our model builders working with plaster have given the realization a lot of thought. they poured plaster into flat forms, broke it into pieces and piled them on top of each other. this way a natural rock formation is created. and you have to keep in mind
that this is calcareous sandstone. there is a lot of washing out by mountain water. this creates whole new formations and you can see calcareous deposits. on the mountains it almost looks like a stalactite cave. all this you have to color and craft harmoniously.
our model builders took threads, smeared them with plaster and stuck them to the rock. this looks especially realistic and most of all creates variety. so, even inside the mountain, in the rock face, there are lots of details to be found. very special to me is
the "fioro di furore", a little canyon on the amalfi coast. there we have a little fishermen's village, this village has been built into the rock, one storey on top of the other. what's so special about this village is, each house can only be accessed through several stairs. this was a real challenge in model building, how to design the stairs all the way to the top.
a typical picture for the amalfi coast are the vineyards on the hills. every square meter of space was used to build a platform and grow wine. the elaborate part for us model builders was to put in all these walls and all the stairs going up. and of course to plant all the single grapevines.
we planted several thousand grapevines. that alone took three to four weeks. something special is hidden behind this castle. i can't wait to see it completed. later on, when it's up and running, this will smoke and be illuminated vividly. the challenge for the electronics department is, that it needs to be disassembled.
you have to be able to reach inside all this technology. there are hundreds of pipes for the smoke leading to the bottom, spreading the smoke through the building. leds are hidden all over here, in the rock, in the building, to have colorful illumination in the end. here you can see a snapshot of life
how we imagine it in a cartoon style, but important to us are the little details and scenes here at the beach. and this is how we imagined a spaghetti party could look like. the waterfall in this narrow canyon is not just any waterfall, but special. it's the first waterfall in the miniatur wunderland which will move by illumination.
this means with specially arranged led and fairy lights it shall create the idea of water falling down. the trullo houses here were an especially big challenge. we didn't know how to make the individual bricks that form the cone. a colleague had the idea
to make a master model, mold it and through centrifugal processing, cast all the cones. ruins are a special treat for the model builder. here we can creatively rave. but they are complicated to build.. all the single stones have to be carved and engraved.
this is very elaborate. here we had the idea to make some forms and pour some of the walls to later assemble them again as one ruin. the specialty here is that you can tell the old roof and the roof beams.
later we have to be able to access the landscape to vacuum and for repairs and for taking off derailed trains. that is why we integrated these hatches. these hatches are special because we planned them from the beginning. down there in the wood everything is hollow and clear and easy to access. right here some things still need to be done,
some buildings are missing. tobi and nikolas are still building them. but as you can guess from the atmosphere this will be atrani, a typical south italian town. when you lean down here and look through the viaduct onto the market place or across the roofs and you see the playful aspects of life
then you can get an idea how much excitement and surprise will await us in the future. 14 years of wunderland, we've been building for 14 years now and i must admit i still have goosebumps when i look at the new pieces. it's the highest value on earth when you get up with a smile in the morning
and can hardly wait to get to work. this is how we mostly feel here at the wunderland we all have one thing in common: we can't wait to get finished! so, dear gerhard, thank you! you gave us a great introduction, and we can hardly wait until this dream here has come true and our first visitors can see the finished amalfi coast.
this is it for today! i hope we could give you a good impression of the amalfi coast and this little masterpiece. see you next episode! bye!