My LEGO Nexus Organization

Top Gear presenter James May is looking for volunteers to help him build a new house in Surrey - made entirely out of Lego bricks.

As part of his BBC series James May's Toy Stories, he plans to build a two-storey house in the middle of the Denbies Wine Estate, in Dorking.

More than three million Lego bricks have been delivered to the site.

May will host a building day next Saturday, when members of the public can help him with the project.

The house will be life-size with a staircase, toilet and shower, and May said once it was completed he intended to live in it for a few days.

-BBC News

Heh, wow, that' quite shocking, I wonder what will happen if a tornado came by and destroyed it :o.

Go James May! That was an idea I had, a house out of LEGO Bricks. Did you hear that James May and Aardman created a plasticine garden? Can't wait to see the show.

That sounds so cool! I hope the toilet works.....

When I first read this topic's title I thought they were introducing a line of sets based of the TV show House. =P

Sounds pretty interesting... But how would the other stuff work...?

Let's just hope it doesn't break apart.
Also, one problem: How is the plumbing going to work?
(And where is it, what country/state is it in?)

I'm not exactly sure how they are going to do the plumbing etc. but they said they would find a way to organize it.

It said it was in Dorking.

Some where around Surrey. They have an e-mail address for it, and he's asking for people to help build it, as well as give some LEGO bricks they don't need any more.

Yeah, and considering he already has an order for 3 million bricks, I don't think it will be too hard.

I wish I could go and help... and I would imagine they would be super-glueing the structure together. For plumbing, I wonder that too.

I wish I could help too, considering I'd need to book  plane flight, however....

I wonder how many bricks you'd need for the stair case... it would have to be a lot, it needs to hold the weight of James May.

For plumbing, I hope they don't just use pipes and then cover them with bricks >:( that would take away from the awesomeness if they did that :-\

lol.  I'm not sure.

Um...where is that?

That's in England.

Oh... I hardly know any other places than Glucestershire, Devon, Cornwall, brighton or London in england. ironically, I live in england.

Now... how's the lighting going to work?

Not sure.... go to http://www.BBC.com and type in the title and it should give you complete information.

Oobject interviews Barnaby Gunning, the architect for Top Gear presenter, James May’s Lego House (with Pics)
August 24th, 2009 link to (permalink)

Barnaby Gunning has an unusual architectural background that makes him one of the few people who could design a real house from toy bricks. In addition to having worked for the world famous architects Renzo Piano and Norman Foster he has also worked with the UK’s rock star engineer Neil Thomas, at Atelier One.

Perhaps Gunning’s work with the Maverick furniture designer, Ron Arad, whose work is currently the subject of a major exhibition at MoMA, is what qualified him most. When Top Gear presenter, James May approached Arad with an unusual request, Ron Arad knew just the man. He called up Barnaby saying, “there’s a TV production team here and they want an architect to help them design a house entirely out of Lego�.

The Lego house is not an illusion, explains Barnaby, “its made of real bricks, and put together with no glue�.

Oobject: No glue?

BG: Yes, amazingly we did tests with glue and it didn’t make much difference?

Oobject: Who the blazes do you get to test Lego structural engineering?

BG: Well you need someone used to testing weird structures. Atelier One and City University ran structural tests on individual blocks, then looked at breaking loads for diffent types of Lego beams. It turned out Lego beams, the size required for a house are structurally feasible.

Oobject: What was the end solution, structurally?

BG: The structure could have been fully lego, but there is a timber ’safety frame’ inside the walls which replaces the lego joists. We designed the bottom edge of the lego beams to use three layers of thin lego plates which perform very well in tension. Three layers of these are the size of one regular course.

Oobject: So what exactly is made of Lego?

BG: Pretty much everything except the joists, the electrics and the lighting. In fact we probably could have done some of that in Lego too. Even the toilet will be in Lego.

Oobject: The toilet - right, this the thing we want to know most, how does a Lego toilet work - I mean how much of it is actually Lego?

BG: Pretty much all of it. The exact design is being specified by the interior designer and will have a Lego cistern connected to a Lego bowl via a Lego pipe. It will even have a Lego flusher.

Oobject: But can you poop in it?

BG: That’s the least of your problems. Have you ever tried sitting on pixelated plastic?

Oobject: What have been the biggest challenges so far?

BG: Making sure we don’t run out of bricks. We have 3M on site, but they are a finite supply and I have to negotiate with the interior designer, who’ll be doing furniture and art work, for bricks for the walls.

Oobject: Do you have miniature brick layer people to build the walls?

BG: Actually we have 3000 volunteers.

Oobject: Tiny little volunteers?

BG: No, ordinary members of the public. It helps when you are recruiting people for a construction project if you have the TV presenter of Top Gear to ask around.

Oobject: I guess, unless it was that miserable one.

BG: Yes, fortunately we had James May not Jeremy Clarkson.

Oobject: One of the problems with giant Lego structures we’ve seen before is that they look nasty because the designs are literal and figurative, like something from a model village. How did you manage to get the Lego house to actually look interesting architecturally?

BG: Largely that was a result of James May being on the same page as us. James realized the kitsch potential from the get go and specifically asked that we didn’t just build an overgrown standard model.

Oobject: Thanks Barnaby, one quick question, can you build us a house out of pasta?

BG: Sure, Penne or Spaghetti?

View Slideshow of Construction Progress
http://www.oobject.com/pictures-of-the-lego-house-construction-progress/abstract-wall/5662/

Article:
http://oobject.com/home/featured/oobject-interviews-barnaby-gunning-the-architect-for-top-gear-presenter-james-mays-lego-house-with-pics/26330/

Source: oobject.com

Whoa... that's pretty cool. I'd do that... but I don't have enough LEGO's to even build a lifesize chair :)

That's cool.

PS Decided to come back

Over two million Lego bricks have been used so far.


PICTURES OF THE HOUSE ARE SHOWN HERE:
http://designcrave.com/2009-08-31/top-gears-star-james-may-building-a-real-lego-house/

Whoa, that looks awesome! I wish I could have helped build it.

Those are awesome! (http://designcrave.com/2009-08-31/top-gears-star-james-may-building-a-real-lego-house/)

And NOW the vids...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR9Taodu2FY


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Kf-R1RKNk

Woah.  I like the first a lot too. It showed a really cool design :)

Those are really neat MsRR!

I know I'm late...  ::)

That is awesome! Although I can't say I really liked the color scheme :P

Topic Dead, TopiClosed and Archived.