Pride and Palaces

Today’s builder, Zosia, is a wizard when it comes to creating buildings for royals and the rich. He’s made several of these glittering homes, each more extravagant than the last!

“I love a lot of things about palaces,” he tells me, “like their harmony and monumentality. I used to build in a medieval style but that wasn’t enough for me – I wanted to improvise more. Actually, now I just improvise most of my builds!”

Going in without a plan and coming out with such a polished building is quite the feat, but it gives Zosia flexibility and variety to keep things fresh. “Sometimes the process is really short but sometimes it takes way longer,” he explains.

For example, Fairfax Palace took a very long time, with its intricate gold details and ruby red roof. This build also sports a fountain in the courtyard and a hedge garden in the back, so that its inhabitants can enjoy the summer sun outside.

I’m a huge fan of the detail that Zosia puts into all of his builds, like the elegant curve, blue windows, and shining white spire of the Sisters’ palace.

It’s hard for me to choose, but I think my favourite detail might be the statues you can see on the roof of Beauclerk, along with the detail on the windows that looks so intricate it might as well be made from lace.

Zosia tells me that it’s also hard for him to pick a favourite build. “Generally I'm not good at rating my own buildings, because it's a really subjective thing,” he says. But he does have a soft spot for his latest build, Baltimore Palace. “I really like the fact that in building it I used everything I’ve learned in the last year. I like how detailed and neat it is too, and it’s my first published palace with the dome, which I always wanted to make.” And he managed to create the whole thing in just two days!

Zosia also used Baltimore Palace to spread a message of love for Pride month this June. He was inspired to do so by his own experiences of homophobia and his desire for love and peace across the whole world. “Love is love, and nothing else matters,” he told me. Well said!

He also has plans to spread a Pride message when he publishes his next build, a recreation of the real Polish palace, Szczekociny. It’s the first time Zosia has built something using photos as a reference, and it’s more of a plain stone palace than the glittering gold that usually adorns his builds. It’s nice to mix things up once in awhile, and he tells me that it’s coming along really nicely so far.

After he’s done with Szczekociny, Zosia simply wants to keep creating. “I started making Minecraft builds when I was about 10,” he tells me. “Actually, I’m an autodidact!” That’s a fancy way of saying that he taught himself everything he knows. “I never watched any building tutorials,” he explains. He does credit his school art lessons as being very helpful though. “I’ve learned things like how to make my buildings more realistic and how to add some fancy details.”

Zosia tells me that he’s always inspired, by everything from music to other builders in the community. I’m looking forward to seeing where this inspiration leads him, both because of the meticulous beauty of his creations and because of the great messages that he chooses to spread with them.

Renders by Ploetz, Knockz, mag32387 and Boksu