Guardian Building Reproduction Out of Legos

[Scottathew]

EDIT: This was already discussed here: http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...ok-LEGOS/page4

http://lego.gizmodo.com/this-8-foot-high-lego-guardian-building-took-22-months-1661715414

Seeing a photo of this model was one of those rare times when I double take a Lego build to make sure that it isn't actually just a picture of the real thing. Jim Garrett has built a massive 8 foot model of the Guardian Building in Detroit and it is truly impressive.

The model will be on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan from November 24th until sometime in early January if you want to go take a look at this 190 lb mammoth for yourself.

[canuck]

Ah...Beauty, eh?

[Gistok]

I take it you don't get into DETROIT CONNECTIONS much....

http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...ok-LEGOS/page4

Beat you by a day....

[Gistok]

Builder Jim Garrett of Royal Oak has a passion for Detroit buildings [[don't we all... well most of us...) And so he converts that passion into 3 dimensions, by building them out of LEGO bricks. Jim has spent 10s of thousands on his great LEGO creations of Detroit's building heritage, and among AFOLs [[Adult Fans of LEGO) he's garnered the nickname "DecoJim".

Here's many of his great Detroit building designs....
http://www.mocpages.com/folder.php/8777

And FYI... there's over 300,000 adult fans of LEGO worldwide now... just 15 years ago there were fewer than a 1,000. The number doubles every few years.

There's an adult club called MichiLug [[which I'm not a member of)... Michigan LEGO User Group... that put on annual displays, mainly at The Henry Ford and The Max. I met the members back in 2007 at the NMRA [[North American Model Railway Association) show at Cobo, where many of Jim Garretts earlier buildings were on display.

[Scottathew]

I take it you don't get into DETROIT CONNECTIONS much....

http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...ok-LEGOS/page4

Beat you by a day....

LOL, I don't! I bookmark directly to Discuss Detroit.

[mikeg19]

I didn't see it or I missed it, but does he use standard LEGO pieces only? I haven't used LEGO's in about, oh, 15-20 years, but from what I remember, there were mostly blocks and some unique pieces, but probably not anything to make an exact replica of buildings. Either way, it's impressive.

[Gistok]

Well both the number of LEGO colors and part shapes have increased exponentially in the last 20 years... here's just the colors now...
http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Colour_Palette

[buckster1986]

It would be very cool if LEGO reached out to him to do a Detroit building in their Architect series.

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Architect...s=1t1&device=c

[mikeg19]

My God. $50 for a lego building. My dad would have slapped me if I asked for that at Toys R Us.

[bailey]

My God. $50 for a lego building. My dad would have slapped me if I asked for that at Toys R Us.

Had that same sticker shock when doing xmas shopping last year for neices and nephews hitting lego age. I came across this guy's blog post http://therealityprose.wordpress.com...ned_with_lego/
money quote

What happened to LEGO?

If all the signs lead to the price of LEGO not increasing overtime, then why is there a common belief that it has? I have couple hypotheses:

1. Children who were bought LEGO as gifts are now old enough to buy it for themselves and for others as gifts and they are surprised by the price.
2. The advent of collectible LEGO sets and the internet has driven the secondary market of LEGO through the roof

Buying LEGO sets as an adult
When we are young, we do not know the value of money let alone the toys we play with. Our parents work tirelessly to buy us the newest, most popular toys and we never realize the effort that went into earning that money. Eventually we get our own jobs and have our own kids. The prices of the toys we had as kids comes as a shock. $150 for a toy? $200 for a toy? These prices are outrageous. It is supposed to be a kid’s toy right? Our eyes may be drawn to the large sets but that doesn’t mean that reasonably priced sets are not nearby. In addition, as I stated before, LEGO has started to market some of their sets to an older audience. That $400 Super Star Destroyer is not for your kid; it is for you. This market didn’t exist 20 years ago.
There is another factor that comes with the sticker shock. As I showed before, LEGO has had $100+ sets for a while. However, only recently have they produced sets even more pricy than that. When we were kids, the $100 set was the pinnacle of LEGO. It was the set we all aspired to own. It was the set we all went straight to at the store. Of course we rarely ended up with that set, but that was our dream.
Now, the dream set is closer to the $400 range. It doesn’t mean that LEGO doesn’t make sub-$100 sets. They do, and more than ever. It just means that in comparison the $25 set looks a lot smaller than it did when the largest set was only $100. LEGO pricing has become a victim of its own expanding market.

They've always been expensive, we just didn't notice.

[Gistok]

TLG [[The LEGO Group) didn't take adults seriously until 2001... when 600 signatures were sent to the LEGO company owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen.... the 10,000 AFOLs [[Adult Fans Of LEGO) back then, today number 300,000.