Luxury Lair!

Imagine building a vast mansion, inspired by the precise architecture of the Villa Savoye and the high-tech home of Iron Man. What do you think you would you call it? Coming up with a name grand enough to fit such a huge and impressive house might be difficult.

Team Cr3Art, a group of eight French builders, decided that it would be best to keep their name simple. Their “Functional Modern House” took 300 hours across three months to build, and all that hard work made something much more complex and fancy than the name Functional Modern House might suggest!

As you can see in the image at the top of this article, the mansion sits on a beautiful coastline, perched upon a long cliff and overshadowed by towering palm trees. Walking along the bridge to the island will give you a great view of the boat, and there are plenty of places to take a swim, too.

If you don’t fancy a dip in the pool, you could try the sea, though climbing the sheer cliffs to get back inside might be tricky. Maybe you could get a helicopter to lift you up? There are two different places for them to land, after all.

Instead of showing off with a dramatic title, Team Cr3Art wanted to highlight the 'functions' of their Functional Modern House. Like the fact that the house has over 30 mechanisms that are truly functional - including elevators, televisions, and even a piano!

The team believes that “the best part of your house is the kitchen,” which has a total of five working mechanisms. Including that piano, which they call “the funniest thing” in the house. It’s playable because each key hides an invisible villager, and playing the piano actually means “activating” them. Each one has been specially modified to give different sounds from the game, creating a fully playable piano.

Clever - but a bit cruel for the imprisoned villagers!

Not all of their creative quirks are high-tech though. Cr3Art told me that they are also very proud of the huge outdoor tennis courts, and check out the attention to detail on the underground basketball courts, with nets made of cobwebs. This little “spin” shows what makes the Functional Modern House great; all the innovation and design fits right in with the standard Minecraft aesthetic.

Functional Modern House hides a lot of fascinating details like how the televisions work: “This is only two item frames with maps inside, those maps were specially designed for the TV. We switch the map into the item frame really quickly - like a GIF - and it creates the illusion of a real TV show.” Plus, of course, the remote will change the channel!

With so many clever applications of redstone, command blocks, and armor stands, it’s amazing that these eight builders managed to create the house in just three months. They were even careful enough to make sure that each system only activates if you’re nearby, to make the map playable on the widest possible range of computers.

As you might have guessed from the quality of this place, this isn’t the team’s first build. In the three years that they’ve been working together, they’ve created over 20 maps, including this gorgeous floating cathedral and a vast overgrown city.

“Each map that we built was a real pride for [us],” the team tells me. “Each project is a new way to expand the limit of the game, and to show what is possible with the amazing tool that is Minecraft.” Take a look at the gallery above - they certainly should be proud!

So what’s next for the team? Well, they’re already working on four projects! Expect to see two more maps, a server, and a new project focusing on command blocks that has a pirate theme. And if you’d like to set sail with Team Cr3Art, they’re looking for talented and passionate players to join them.

In the meantime, you can move into the Functional Modern House to live a life of luxury - just try not to think too much about all the invisible villagers trapped in the piano.