#alfea reference

Dorm Floor Plan

"I have a floor plan I'm pretty happy with" I said 4 iterations in. This is... maybe seven eight. And three days later. I've just gotta fling this one out, I can't keep nitpicking it.

I'm still not entirely happy with the nook, I probably could have gotten the proper fit if I'd been willing to move the bathroom out (and mirror it over to the other side) but I need to be done with this or I'm going to send myself completely barmy.

fellow tumblrina @dagstar7 passed along a link to a copy they'd made of what may have been the official copy of the dormitory floor plan, unfortunately the source has been lost to the depths of the internet, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was however pretty pleased to discover that my floor plan looked pretty similar, although their copy's nook was slightly more rupee shaped, and their bathroom was flat.

I've assumed a bit of mirroring in the dorm that should be just the other side of Stella's wall judging by the windows and balconies from the outside. (the windows and balconies that really don't work once you start measuring from the inside...)

How many stories? 5, I think it's technically 5. (*and a bit)

The average height of a door is around 2 meters, using my line copy/paste stamping method, I have calculated the bottom of the balconies under the tall windows to be a minimum of 8m high.

Even the tallest classrooms, (USA ceilings 13feet=3.962m) fall short of 4m. There is enough theoretical space for a floor between that.

(even with the thickness of floors which can be between 10 and 30cm.)

Not a full floor, but a mezzanine floor. Or a Partial floor that only covers part of that story. In some episodes we've actually seen Griselda on the mezzanine floor that overlooks one of the classrooms, and given the height of the tall windows, I don't think she's looking down from that floor.

We've also seen in several episodes that both classrooms and hallways have windowed walls on both sides, and some but not all hallways have exceptionally high vaulted ceilings. Along some of the windowed walls there's a ledge which I believe is part of the mezzanine floor.

I actually think there might be 2 mezzanine levels, given the estimated heights. There might be more than just five floors, technically, but that's more about the shifting heights on the floors of the individual stories within the building, than true floors.

In the second picture above, and interior shot of one of Alfea's hallways, in the background we can see an elevation of several steps up. Even outside, the double doors at the center of the verandahs are slightly elevated from the rest of the walkway by several steps.

So within the mirrored buildings I think the stories/floors are primarily divided like:

(*Stella's tower closet - not large enough to count as a real floor, but honorable mentions because it is there) The (Winx's) Dormitory floor The Upper Mezzanine The "Balcony" floor (at the base of the tall windows) The Lower Mezzanine The Ground floor

I genuinely believe they Did Not Have a Floor Plan when they made the series. Maybe I should start a tag just to complain about all the times it broke me.

#non-euclidean alfea

With other locations, like the dorms, the kitchens and Wizgiz's classroom, the zoom in/fade in tends to have a strong percentage of agreement on where in the school they are generally.

The simulation room though...

The very first time we see the simulation room, we zoom in to the north tower (the one that gets destroyed in the season 1 end battle), subsequent zooms suggest the East tower, 'somewhere' in the north-east building (where the Winx dorm is) and in the west tower, where I've assumed the dining hall is. (or under it at least)

I had actually misremembered the order of events from the Season 1 battle and convinced myself the north tower was destroyed before the Winx were transported to Domino, but upon rewatch, the tower is still standing after the teleport.

The one major internal feature that stops me from wanting to put the sim room in the north tower though, is the windows.

Big curved and a little swoopy. Like a much shorter version of the windows of the rear towers' lower floors. There is nowhere on the front towers that have similar windows, the closest is, as far as I can tell, just a fancy open air walkway around the tower's middle-ish area.

And then there's season 4, which is the first time we really zoom in on the rear/east tower, but also the first time we get to see anyone going from the sim room to somewhere else:

(I have figured out recording! sort of. the splice is just the story of the Black Circle being chopped from the 402 opening)

This sequence cements the idea that at the very least the sim room is definitely in the north-west building, but further, that the sim chamber is on the lower levels of the rear/west tower.

While the group leaves and turns left out the door, the corridor they walk down has very distinct widows on their left:

These windows are closer in appearance to the windows found on the outer sides of the mirrored buildings:

Again we're seeing a case of the internal size doesn't match the exterior, but the scene does have some "internal logical consistency."

So at the moment I'm going to keep working on the assumption that the sim room is actually in the lower floors of the rear tower.

That the window we see from the inside is actually a smaller window separate from the external windows we see, because there is a hallway that runs along the outer wall from the open air hallway door mirroring the external staircase up to a landing (where it exits out the rear facing door,) and around to the other side, down a matching staircase and into the ground floor outer hallway.

over all I'm currently imagining it looking something like this:

Please ignore the fact the red dome indicating the mvr chamber is so far forward in the left half of the picture, I forgot it was sitting directly under the windows and there's only so many times I can redo things from scratch because I wasn't thinking and closed my files losing access to individual layers.

Also, yes, based on external measurements, I'm working on the idea that there are 2 internal hallways on the ground floor and lower mezzanine, separating two series of classrooms.

and the similar testing room without the mvr chamber being in the other rear tower's base, in basically a mirror but with more seating. Partly because that one does zoom/fade in to the other rear/south tower.

Alfea Cardinal Orientation Ramble/Notes Part 01:

Based on statements made during the Season 01 siege, (Episode 22) the Alfea Entrance Gate is the Eastern side of Alfea, the Tower which collapses during this siege is the North-East Tower.

Based on the view past the tower (the lack of any sign of the lake or Magix), the direction of the flying soldiers, and the ground troops, it is reasonable to assume they came along the road rather than attempting to pave their way through the forest since they’d need to go around the lake anyway.

During Season 02 (episode 01), Bloom refers to the location of Alfea’s “Forbidden Magic Archive” as “somewhere near the South-West Tower.”

It is possible that the four notable towers (two flat topped and two dome topped towers at either end of the long side buildings) are aligned with the Cardinal (North etc.) directions and not the Ordinal (North-East etc.) however, if this were the case, this would make the central building in which Fargonda has her office, the only building which could be classified as a tower, which could in turn, be the south-west tower.

This would mean that the main entry gate is on the North-Eastern side of Alfea-

(Based on screen shots showing Magix and panning shots from Alfea to Cloud Tower, Alfea should be the flower looking symbol, with Cloud Tower being the Triforce, and Red Fountain being the spikey black triangle on yellow. Brown blob on A|CT connecting line Lake Roccaluce? Terrible map. 2/10.)

-putting Magix to the North, Cloud Tower to the North-East, and Red Fountain East.

Which would make sense except it would mean that the army came basically straight across the lake, or skimmed it’s Northern edge as closely as they could. (But then they would have said North, and the gate would be the North-East.)