After turning my attention to the lovely Vespa 150 from Paper-Replika, and then the Chinese Dragon from Canon as light relief, I decided to return to architecture with one of the recent releases from Canon. Far Eastern architecture is quite fascinating, and I have been itching to try one of these. The large structures of Potala and Angkor Wat were just that - rather too large - and didn't look good candidates for scale reduction. I have tried castles before, so my eye was drawn to the temple and shrine buildings. Wanting something relatively simple, I selected the Pagoda from Horyuji Temple.
Horyuji Temple dates from the early seventh century, but the buildings were destroyed, probably by fire, in the year 670. It was rebuilt over the following forty years, and the present pagoda dates from then, though the massive central pillar has been dendro-dated to 594, so may have been part of the original buildings on the site. The pagoda was built to house a fragment of the Buddha's bone, amongst four relief images of Buddhist teachings. The photograph attached is from Wikimedia Commons, authored by 663highland on ja.wikipedia.
The model has 195 parts, on 27 A4 sheets (plus a cover sheet with photographs of the finished model and a brief description of the building), and 10 pages of assembly instructions.
Alan