LEGO House

LEGO House Reopens & My Microplis Exhibit Extended

Monday, 22nd June 2020 By Caz

For the last 100 days, along with thousands of other attractions around the world, the LEGO House in Billund has been silent and empty of visitors, due to the pandemic restrictions. Things are now improving in Denmark, so from today, 22nd June, the House will be open again, with special social distancing measures in place. The Dinosaurs can’t wait to welcome visitors again.

As many of my viewers will know, I have some of my Micropolis models on display in the Masterpiece Gallery, which would normally run for 12 months. But recently, the LEGO House folks have been in touch to ask if they can keep my builds for another 12 months, so they will continue to be on display until September 2021.

LEGO House AFOL exhibition Interview With Stuart Harris

Friday, 8th May 2020 By Caz

The LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, has been closed since March due to the ongoing pandemic. In an initiave to show fans who are unable to visit what is in the House, Stuart Harris the LEGO House Master Builder is conducting a series of video interviews of the international AFOLs who currently have their work on display in the Masterpiece Gallery. Yours truly was their first gineapig – but I think it worked out well!

You can watch the other interviews in the series in their playlist.

Interview By Beyond The Brick About My Masterpiece Gallery MOCs

Tuesday, 24th December 2019 By Caz

As I mentioned during my Road To Billund series, I was interviewed by Beyond The Brick for their YouTube channel, about my Micropolis MOCs which are currently in the LEGO House Masterpiece Gallery. It was a lovely early Christmas present today to find they have now published their full tour of What’s New at LEGO House for 2020 and included my interiew in the middle, which starts at 4’26” if you want to skip ahead to that.

Road To Billund Part 4 – LEGO House AFOL Day

Thursday, 26th September 2019 By Caz

Thursday 26th

After our private set up day yesterday, the LEGO House was open today exclusively for the 2019 AFOL Day, for visitors who are in Denmark for the Skærbæk Fan Weekend in a couple of days. Fairy Bricks were in attendance with one of their huge LEGO mosaics, and I was able to complete square 358 while I was waiting for the events to begin in earnest.

It slotted into the pattern somewhere near the middle, but didn’t look like it really fitted there until the mosaic was complete (which we will see later on).

As the AFOLs gathered in the atrium, Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, 4th generation owner of the LEGO Group, was interviewed by Jesper Vilstrup, General Manager of LEGO House. It was an upbeat discussion and fans were able to chat briefly with them both afterwards.

Thomas Kirk Kristiansen talks to Jesper Vilstrup

I was able to thank them in person for the amazing opportunity of being able to display my work in the Masterpiece Gallery, and we traded Sigfigs as a souvenir, which was very cool.

Upstairs in the main Gallery, AFOLs were beginning to wander about and look at all the wonderful exhibits.

The video link I included in yesterday’s blog post will show you my interactive tour around the Gallery, but I will also showcase some photos of my favourites from each builder here. The first is this really fun Hot Dog van by Hsinwei Chi of Taiwan. He is one of the two other AFOLs I share the display case with.

I couldn’t possibly pick a favourite from my own MOCs! So here’s another view of it in its entirity.

Eero Okkonen is renowned for his character builds and this rendition of his favourite Finnish Heavy Metal band Circle is no exception. Each band member has so much life in him!

Jason Allemann, half of well-known building team JK Brickworks is famous for his kinetic models. These chariot race horses can gallop along while the chariot gently sways behind them. None of the builds in the cabinet were moving, but they did have a display showing a video loop of how the models work, which adds a great deal to their appeal.

Krystal Dubois in the K in JK Brickworks, and this wonderful model showed off bags of humour and character which I enjoyed very much.

Marion Weintraut’s model was a large-scale dilapidated mansion. There were so many fantastic details showing how the building was going to wrack and ruin – but among my favourite techniques was Marion’s use of the sprues (which normally get thrown away after builders have extracted the three-leafed plants from them) to form vines creeping all over the building.

Zio Chen had made some charming little lucky pigs (for the Chinese Year of the Pig) as part of his display. I also loved the intricate plaque with Chinese writing, although I’m sorry to say I can’t read what it says.

Paul Hetherington’s build was another highlight – he’s a builder after my own heart in his use of bold colours to build architectural subjects. You could look at this for hours and constantly see new details emerge.

Timofey Tkachev’s Steampunk-style typewriter also caught my eye. Although it’s clearly more up to date than you think, since is has a key for “.com”!

This mosaic portrait of John Lennon was by the late Aurthur Gugick, an American AFOL who was tragically killed in a car accident in March along with his girlfriend. I wasn’t aware of his work until I saw this picture, but it’s clear that the LEGO community has lost a very talented artist. This picture will apparently hang in one of the offices at the new LEGO HQ building when it is completed later this year. A fitting tribute to the man, I think.

Simon Hundsbichler is an Austrian AFOL who has a knack for bringing living things to life in brick. My favourite model which he brought along was of this tiger drinking from a swampy pool.

Serbian AFOL Milan Sekiz meanwhile had built an Iron Man suit of armour which he can actually wear! It looked quite fragile and was one of the last models to be fully set up in the Gallery yesterday.

Matthew Goldberg’s fantastical creatures are mostly built from Bionicle and other constraction elements. They can look quite unlike “normal” LEGO but still show a high degree of skill and artistry to each creation.

All the models in the Masterpiece Gallery are amazing in their own way, but I think my favourite has to be this spectacular coral reef by Ryan van Duzor. He is a biology teacher by trade and this astonishing MOC has to have some of the craziest parts usage I have ever seen!

Sven Franic’s wizardly-inspired owl, magic wand and other paraphernalia was chosen for inclusion just before Sven got a job as a LEGO designer. It’s not surprising to see why they hired him!

Stephan Gofers’ two models were quite different – this western train ambush had many wonderful details to admire. His other build was a teetering version of Jack Skellington’s house which looked like it was defying gravity.

A few weeks prior to my Danish trip, I had been chatting with Matthew Ashton who I follow on Twitter. He is VP of Design and lead judge on the first ever LEGO Masters TV show, which aired in the UK on Channel 4. I wondered if he would be around during the AFOL Day and he said he would probably be in meetings all day but wasn’t sure. Just before lunch today he tweeted that he was free for half an hour if I wanted to say hello at the House! And so here we are, all smiles. What a lovely thing for him to do, seeing as I’m just another fan, and I’m sure he has thousands of those!

There were various other activities going on during the day, including a tour of the LEGO factory but sadly I wasn’t able to get on one of those – there was a bit of a scrum for places and I was just too late. But I was pleased to see that the Fairy Bricks Mosaic was finally finished – can you spot the square that I made?

During the afternoon I was interviewed by Beyond The Brick about my Micropolis MOCs (my section starts around 4’26”). It was woven into their tour-around-the-gallery video, compèred by Stuart Harris, which was finally released on Christmas Even 2019 (they clearly had a bit of an editing backlog after their European trip!).

That capped off another amazing day at the LEGO House! Tomorrow we will head south to the international gathering of AFOLs that is the Skærbæk Fan Weekend.

Road To Billund Part 3 – Setup In The LEGO House Masterpiece Gallery

Wednesday, 25th September 2019 By Caz

Wednesday 25th

It finally happened! And I still can’t quite believe it!

I had an amazing time setting up my Micropolis MOCs in the LEGO House in Billund. Ever since reading the invitation email in mid-March, I have been trying to imagine what today would be like.

I met up with 14 other AFOLs in the hotel lobby at 8:45am and we were taken by coach to the LEGO House. Some folks had had long flights and only just arrived last night, while one or two of us had been in town for a day or two.

After some welcome introductions and going through the timetable for the day, we were taken on a tour of the House led by Senior Experience Designer Stuart Harris and Mike Ganderton, Head of Experience Development, together with Birte Knudsen (Senior Project Manager at LEGO House) and Søren Mølby who had been communicating with use via email for several months.

Several of my fellow AFOLs had not visited the House before, but all of us were awestruck at the amazing Tree of Creativity which soars up to the roof from the main atrium, surrounded by the huge spiral staircase. At the bottom, we saw the iconic LEGO Duck, a wooden model which was on of the first to be made by Ole Kirk Kristiansen when he started his toy business in the 1930’s. Its shape was carved into the “bark” of the tree.

Each branch holds iconic LEGO sets from the company’s history. My favourite was the Classic Space diorama which can be seen from the top of the stairs.

This is a view of the Masterpiece Gallery which not many people get to see – five empty display cases, guarded by the three Dinosaurs, ready to take some of the finest examples of LEGO models from around the globe. Very exciting!

Soon we were invited to start unpacking our precious models. Mine had travelled in the car in three specially made cardboard boxes – which were surprisingly strong. Although this might look like carnage, I was delighted with how well the models had held up during the trip and it didn’t take many minutes to sort them out and put them back on their bases. I’ve been to several shows where the “Baby’s Bottle” circular tower has arrived “flat packed” and has had to be rebuilt, which takes quite a while! No such problem here, thank goodness.

I was being watched by my favourite red Duplo Dino while I unpacked all my MOCs. What a great guardian for my models!

Minor repairs done, and everything dusted, the models were ready to go in the display case. But then we got distracted with another tour around the History Collection in the basement!

I loved that they have built these bricks in concrete into the foundations of the building – with a little moat of real ABS LEGO bricks around the bottom.

Once things were all set up (I will show you a picture a bit later), those of us who had finished were asked to build some cakes and party food out of the many bricks which are to be found around the house. I made a purple present and a cake in the shape of the logo of one of my favourite YouTube channels, Brick Bakery!

Some folks took a long time to complete setting up their models, as they were very intricate and fragile, but once we had all completed our exhibits, we were invited to the atrium to add our own Six Bricks combo to their Wall of Fame. Apparently there are 915,103,765 different ways of combining just six 2×4 red bricks. When you visit LEGO House, your wristband will get you in, but it also allocates a unique combination to you when you leave. This was mine. We were also asked to write something profound on the card next to it – I did my best!

And this is what my Six Bricks combo looks like in situ – on the top row, and in the company of some of the other great folks who are displaying this year.

Then we went back to the Masterpiece Gallery for some more photo opportunities. I loved this view of the cabinet my creations are in, framed by the Duplo Dino.

We were also given these lovely brick trophies to commemorate our models being on display. It will be a great momento of the experience!

Below is a picture of the 2019 Masterpiece Gallery AFOLs, photo courtesy of The LEGO Group. L to R:

Stephan Gofers (Netherlands); Caz Mockett (Great Britain); Hsinwei Chi (Taiwan); Simon Hundsbichler (Austria); Zio Chen (Taiwan); Paul Hetherington (Canada); Milan Sekiz (Serbia); Sven Franic (Croatia, I think); Timofey Tkachev (Russia); Krystal Dubois (Canada); Jason Allemann (Canada); Eero Okkonen (Finland); Matthew Goldberg (USA); Marion Weintraut (Germany); Ryan van Duzor (USA).

What a fantastically talented bunch of people – I’m in exceptional company!

The Class of 2019 AFOLs In The Masterpiece Gallery

We also had a group shot taken in the atrium, with Stuart, Mike, Søren and Birte hiding at the back! (Photo courtesy of The LEGO Group).

Then it was time to go back to our hotel, buzzing with energy and still trying to process the memories from such an amazing day. I would love to say a huge thank you to Stuart, Mike, Birte and Søren for treating us like VIPs and giving us such an awesomly unforgettable experience!

A Trophy And Some SigFigs From Awesome People

This video shows a full walk around of the Masterpiece Gallery, showing each of the models in detail. Enjoy.

Micropolis & My Amazing LEGO News!

Wednesday, 15th May 2019 By Caz

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram may well have heard my amazing news already, but I’ve been meaning to make a video to share it on YouTube for a couple of weeks. I am delighted to announce that I have been invited to display a suburb of my Micropolis MOCs in the Masterpiece Gallery at the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, for a year!

I was very surprised to receive the invitation, and of course it’s a huge honour to have my work on show at the Home of the Brick, not something that I thought would happen in my wildest dreams! I will travel to Billund to set it all up and it will be on show for the first time from 26th September 2019. I am so grateful to everyone who supports me on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram as your kind words and lovely comments always keep me going and give me the inspiration to share more of my work with you. Thank you all! I will leave you with a few shots of what the layout will look like.