Design advice?

[Heliomance]

I'm playing on a server with friends. We're in a very snowy biome, and we're trying to make our buildings fit an Alpine village theme, not looking too out of place. Our main machine building is pretty much just a big cube at the moment, though. I want to make it look like a Swiss castle/chalet/château type thing, but I don't know the design techniques used and such. Here's what it loks like at the moment:

The big tower is to conceal a butt-ugly nerdpole with windmills at the top that one of my friends built. I tried to make it a bit more attractive, but it's still somewhat plain.

 

[Zarkov]

I can't give any advice on design since I usually let the Filler machine handle my designs, i.e. huge rooms under ground with plenty of space for stuff...

Try searching youtube for "architecture design minecraft" and similar, I have seen there are several different series which goes through the basics of architecture, golden ratio etc (from a minecraft perspective).

 

[PeggleFrank]

Try adding railings and some vertical windows without glass on the tower.

Balconies will help.

You'll also need to fill in the gaps.

Also, that choice of colors is grand. You should round off the top of your tower to give it a better shape. Maybe put a hole in the top.

 

[Jess887cp]

Well, for some specific advice, build with something other than white, to contrast with the snow. Some standard stone bricks might do the trick. Add some texture to your building by having bits and bobs stick out, like a secondary tower or something. Some small log cabins dotted around the outside of your swiss castle (chalet? Cheatau?) might be nice. Remember that roofs in snowy areas are quite slanted though, often more than the standart 45 degrees.

You've it down from what I can see from your picture, now just add turrets and walls and places to shoot arrows from and you'll have a mighty fine fortress thing. Add a little village at the bottom and you'll be set!

 

[Heliomance]

Building with something other than the snow bricks might be useful, as they can't be microblocked or turned into slabs or stairs. Trouble is, I can't find any light coloured blocks I like. Sandstone doesn't fit the aesthetic, and I find marble very ugly. Stone's darker than I'd like ideally, but I think I might have to go with it.

 

[Jess887cp]

Well, depending on your mod pack you might be able to dye the bricks. It's possible in the 1.5 beta pack, but I doubt you're using that.

 

[Chocorate]

Try adding railings and some vertical windows without glass on the tower.

Balconies will help.

You'll also need to fill in the gaps.

Also, that choice of colors is grand. You should round off the top of your tower to give it a better shape. Maybe put a hole in the top.

Basically stop building such phallic images.

The new pack has a ton of amazing railcraft bricks and mfr bricks that have to do with snow. I'd like to see someone use them, but I just can't seem to do Minecraft lately.

 

[Wekmor]

Tin Blocks are kinda white and can be cut down

 

[RedBoss]

Try adding railings and some vertical windows without glass on the tower.

Balconies will help.

You'll also need to fill in the gaps.

Also, that choice of colors is grand. You should round off the top of your tower to give it a better shape. Maybe put a hole in the top.

Depth and texture are hard to achieve in Minecraft. Peggle here has given you solid tips. I'd also suggest using contrasting colors, it can break up how plain the build looks and windows and railings help tremendously. I'd also work on breaking up the box structures at the base somehow. a simple roof using the materials of the tower could help a lot in that regard.

Stairs, fences, halfslabs & non-continuous textures can help make a plain build look very awesome.

 

[fergcraft]

you could go to the community showcase thread and look through those for more Ideas I know the show me your bases has a lot of neat ideas.