Apartment Brick MOC: Floor Plans, Modular Levels & Details
Apartments are the most rewarding subject in city building, and the most punishing. A small detached house looks fine however you throw it together, but the moment you go multi-storey the flaws show up: floors that don't line up, hollow interiors, balcony railings and window frames that drift out of true. This guide walks through unit layout, modular floor plates, interior and exterior walls, balconies, windows and mini furniture in build order, so you can skip the three rebuilds most people need.
Start With the Floor Plan: Size and Zoning Decide Everything
Draw the plan onto a baseplate before you pick up a single brick. The worst thing you can do on an apartment MOC is design while you build. A common approach is a 16x16 or 20x20-stud unit, with two units per floor.
Zone by activity: put the living room and bedrooms on the window side, and the kitchen and bathroom in the middle of the plan. Raise the kitchen and bathroom by one plate level on 2x2 elements to fake a floor height difference, which reads instantly as separate zones. Give the stair core its own 4x8-stud footprint running from the ground floor all the way to the roof, so nobody has to enter through someone else's balcony.
Modular Floors: Build One, Repeat It
The key to a multi-storey apartment is designing once and assembling many times. Once the plan is locked, turn each level into a self-contained unit: pave the floor with plates, and use technic bricks at the four corners as locating studs so the floor plate of the level above clips onto the studs of the one below. Stack them and the levels sit perfectly flush, while any single floor can still slide out to have its interior reworked. Lock each level vertically at the four corners with 1x2 technic bricks to stop lateral drift. Want a taller building? Make more identical floor plates, and the storey count of the whole apartment MOC is up to you.
Interior and Exterior Walls: Short Inner Walls, Window Openings Outside
A double-skin exterior wall gives the best result: a light-coloured outer skin standing in for render or brickwork, plus an inner lining of plates that gives the window reveals some thickness, so the windows sit recessed between the two layers and the façade instantly gains depth. Keep interior walls half a level lower than the exterior so you can look down into the rooms from the roof.
At the corners, alternate corner bricks so the joints stagger up the building rather than forming four continuous vertical seams. Leave one row of studs exposed along the top of each floor's exterior wall for the floor plate above to grip. Do not skip that last detail.
Balconies and Windows: The Face of the Building
Balconies are where an apartment looks lived in. Build the cantilevered base from plates and anchor it to the wall with 1x2 technic bricks and technic pins, which is far stronger than resting it against the façade. Run a low railing from 1x4 fence pieces with a bar on top; a shallow one is enough.
Windows come down to consistent gaps. Lay out a template of dark plates to fix the frame spacing first, then set transparent 1x2 glass bricks into it and align them level by level, so the pattern stays true as the building rises. For extra realism, back the glass with a bright silver plate to suggest reflection.
Stair Core and Mini Furniture
Build the stairs as a single flight or an L-shape: each tread is a 1x2 plate raised two levels, with 1x1 plates forming the step edges, 2x4 plates for the landings and thin bar elements as handrails. Leave enough clearance that a minifigure can walk up without clipping.
Furnish each room according to its function. Living room: a 2x4 plate sofa with a backrest, a 2x2 coffee table, and a 1x2 transparent brick for the TV. Kitchen: a 2x2 counter and a 1x2 tall brick for the fridge. Bedroom: a 2x4 plate bed with a pillow and a 1x1 nightstand. Bathroom: a 2x3 bathtub and a 1x2 sink. Shift the colour scheme slightly from unit to unit — that is what makes the whole building read as home to different people.
Pitfall Checklist
A few failures come up again and again: starting to build before the plan is settled, which almost guarantees a rebuild; skipping the inter-floor locating studs, which leaves the storeys misaligned; building cantilevered balconies without reinforcement, so they drop off when you brush past; and changing the window frame spacing halfway up, which makes the upper floors lean visually off true. Follow the sequence of plan first, floor plates second, interior and exterior walls third, furniture last, and the apartment MOC will hold together.
If you want to build a complete apartment block, take a look at BrickPlans. The site carries building MOCs including housing, apartments and street scenes; search for apartment or residential and you will find drawings with full parts lists and step-by-step instructions, which saves a lot of trial and error.