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    Kate Gray
    Written By
    Kate Gray
    Published
    1/19/21

    Divine Dreams

    We explore One Map's astonishing temple!

    High up on the peak of Mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece, the Olympian gods make their home. There's only twelve of them in total – and half of them are busy doing god stuff elsewhere most of the time – but still, twelve people living on one mountain peak is quite a lot. We can all imagine what their house looks like: big white pillars, lots of fiddly swirly bits, and all sorts of spires and domes. We've seen Hercules, we know what god houses look like!

    As it turns out, so does One Map, the 11-person building team behind “Divine Dreams”, a wedding-cake-like fantasy temple that's worthy of a god. In fact, it's not just a temple – it's a temple on a temple on a temple. It's fancy. It even comes with its own mythological story, courtesy of One Map:

    "Divine Dreams is a temple founded by the Gods many centuries ago. This sacred place welcomes humans with a pure heart and will repel bad souls. Feel safe in this lair..."

    The project is built almost entirely out of white blocks, which is quite a feat, considering that there are really only a few pure white blocks available. The team had to be very careful and considerate about where to use each different type of white so that the build didn't just turn into a big snowy blob. "We had to make sure that each block was fixed at a specific place in the structure, and that everything had to remain coherent without too much contrast." Good thing this wasn't built in survival – can you imagine how long it would take to mine all that quartz?!

    Unlike the real Olympian temple, which probably sprung up overnight, the Divine Dreams build took one and a half months to complete. Initially, the team was just three builders, but it didn't take long for others to notice the project and ask to come on board, eventually bringing up the numbers to eleven. Having so many people might sound like a nightmare (have you ever tried working on a group project?) but for One Map, it actually meant that the build got even better. "Working in a team has many advantages," says One Map, "like the ability to develop a larger solid project. Each member has their own knowledge, and can contribute."

    It wasn't easy, though. Just like One Map, the twelve Olympians had to work together, and there were a LOT of wars. They kept trying to end each other. Hopefully, One Map didn't have any issues that bad, but they did have to figure out how to collaborate harmoniously to create Divine Dreams. "We learned to work in a team with a very precise organization and also to continuously help each other to keep a constant quality," they say. "The style is quite complex and not easy for everyone – it was difficult to maintain the same quality for all buildings." Seems like they figured things out the old-fashioned way: communication and friendship! Good thing they aren't real Olympians, or they'd probably have just thrown lightning at each other.

    If you take a look at the One Map Twitter account, you can see some of the twiddly bits of Divine Dreams separately from the rest of the build, allowing you to better appreciate all the teeny-tiny details that went into it. "We would like people to notice the technicality of the detail and the precise use of colors," says One Map – and that's precisely what we'll do. Check out the end rods used in the windows, or the iron trapdoors as tiny pillars; marvel at the way bone block sits next to smooth quartz and white concrete to create the illusion of depth (should we be worried that the gods built their temple out of bones?). And how did they get those trees all the way up there? That's something only the gods know the answer to.

    One Map isn't satisfied with creating a temple for deities though. "For our next projects," they say, "we have the idea of ​​creating a universe resembling this one but surpassing it." What's better and bigger than the gods? I guess we'll just have to wait to find out.

    Renders by @TheMrPinguin_, @Kryppt, @Deltagon, @Iskillia, @VoenixX_, and @AgonyBuilding.

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