Ideas, ideas and more ideas

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to expand the set? We’ve created a great display but there is still so much we could do we increased the size of the display. If we are going to expand the set, (with a view to displaying it some time in the future) we need to be mindful of a few things.

  1. It needs to easily packed, transported and unpacked. This means no fragile or unsupported structures or anything easily damaged by bouncing around in a car boot or a trailer.

  2. It needs to work with the existing display, it needs to integrate seamlessly with the scale and context of the original display.

  3. It must be faithful to the modernist period of the early 1960s Lego design.

  4. Where possible we will source used Lego bricks and parts from the 1950s and 1960s.

First things first - let's do some planning

To work out what the first step in the expansion is to imagine how the final display could look. Sized at around 1.8m x 1m our current display has three different scales of buildings. The small buildings arranged on the baseboard (approximately 14 in all, three mid-scale buildings and five extra-large/skyscraper buildings.

Th existing display set up.

Th existing display set up.

If we were to make a considerable increase in the size of the display we could make it a four-sided display, instead of the current three-sided display. We could replicate the scale by building two levels on the rear of new baseboards, but facing the opposite direction. Viewers could have a four-sided ‘walk-around’ experience of the full display. Here's a plan of how it could work:

The proposed new layout.

The proposed new layout.

We could utilise the existing arrangement and 'mirror' the opposite side with a similar set up. We'll need 14 buildings to fill the two new baseboards; two or three in a larger size and 11 small buildings. we'll also need three or four large MOCs. We'll also double check the extra-large buildings to make sure they don't have an obvious 'back' and 'front', so the display will work whichever position you view it from. 

We'll use the space on each side for our posters and other examples from the era (eg, old packaging and flyers).

What would be ideal is that we don’t replicate an existing building we already have in the display, nor repeat the type of building, eg church, cafe, garage etc.

This is what we have currently have on the display:

  • Hotel

  • The Tiny House

  • The Tiny House (curved roof)

  • The Cafe

  • The Kiosk

  • The Church (#309)

  • The Small Store (#210-2)

  • The ESSO Filling Station (#310)

  • The Fire Station (#308)

  • The VW Dealer (#307)

  • The VW Garage (#306)

  • The Garage (#236)

  • The White and Trans Apartments

  • The Red and White Apartments

  • The Police Station

  • The Large Blue and White Apartments

  • The Sanitarium Factory

  • The Hospital

  • The Empire State Building

  • The Red Carpark

  • The Extra-large Blue Apartments

  • The Blue and White Skyscraper

  • The Shell Building

  • The Large White Apartments

Join us over the next months as we detail our expansion plans. We'll start with the large buildings and work our way to the small buildings that will sit on the two baseboards (which we are yet need to acquire).

We'll use the Stud.io software from the Bricklink website to plan our prototype buildings so we can get a detailed idea of scale and style, as well as the number and types of pieces we need. We should be able to get a feel for both the individual building design as well the expansion plans as a whole.

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