Patching ancient walls with legos

As part of Bocchignano, Italy's group project "20 Eventi," Jan Vormann went around town and filled in all the cracks in the walls with painstakingly clicked-together patches made from legos. Link (via Cribcandy)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Takuan

yes, Poe for the kiddies… I run a VERY special day care… right next to the Lovecraft Preschool.
Takuan

one of our guest speakers for the little ones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD91NEcJ714
cherry shiva

this is annoyingly wonderful !
Itsumishi

This is magical.
Lego was pretty much my entire life from the age of 3 through to 14. Well that and Nintendo products. Visiting Lego Land in Windsor was amazing. God I’d love to go back to that place.

But yeah. This work. It’s amazing. So simple, elegant and just a wonderful mesh of painstaking labour and kids dreams (often coupled with the same kids painstaking labour).

I remember when I was about 4 mum was working on a skyscraper being built in Melbourne (the Daimaru tower for any Melbournians it’s the one next to Melbourne Central that looks like Batman with itâ€™s antennas). Every day we passed the site I’d tell her “just tell me when you want me to put the roof on”. I’m not 100% sure on how I was planning on building the roof, but I’m sure it was going to be out of Lego.

Thinking back on it, they should have let me do it.
eustace

Alas, Takuan, your link is to an incomplete version. Allow me to proffer the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J23sE_b5yg&feature=related
clockworkjoe

Great idea. Lego should make a LEGO strong enough to serve as load bearing weights, so we can build entire pillars out of them.
Spankr

It’s “Lego”, damn it!

;0)
dunxd

Yeah – Lego is definitely the plural. The singular would be “a Lego brick”.

These cracks filled in with Lego remind me of a migraine. The kind brought on by hearing people say legos.
dculberson

Dunxd, you remind me of the “bimmer” versus “beemer” people. (Car versus motorcycle, if you’re curious.) It’s made up by the manufacturer, and isn’t actually some grammatical rule that applies in reality. Nobody outside of a certain subset is bothered by it, and that subset should just kind of relax. Especially for Legos, which are meant to be fun.

Legos legos legos! Stempunk legos, if we’re lucky!
Purly

Legos are sooo expensive these days. It’s probably cheaper to use something else. I guess I lose on understanding why this is a good idea. Won’t people just steal them?
nadhira

This is awesome. And beautiful. Yet it must have been pretty painstaking to produce
Jamie Sue

Beautiful
buddy66

Amazing. Pop Art still swinging after fifty years!
echolocate chocolate

It is not so much filling gaps as uncovering the underlying Lego nature of things.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Spankr, Dunxd, Cha0tic:

You’re trying to make a bunch of English-speakers refrain from grammatically modifying words they kidnap from other languages? Hoo boy.

They’re incorrigible, you know. If you teach them to speak other languages, they play fast and loose with its vocabulary just as they do in English.
cha0tic

Lego. Bloody Americans.
Takuan

Lego â€“ combination of the Danish “leg godt”, which means to “play well”.[31] Lego also means “I put together” in Latin, but LEGO Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, LEGO manufactured wooden toys.
historyman68

@40: “nukular” has been used to an extent that it is considered acceptable by most major dictionaries. It’s been used by at least 3 presidents besides Bush.

http://www.slate.com/id/2071155/
Two Ton Tilly

i like the merging of the old world and the new world. It shows that the two CAN be made to work together. Just like LEGO and Legos, or is it Legoes?
Two Ton Tilly

i like the merging of the old world and the new world. It shows that the two CAN be made to work together. Just like LEGO and Legos, or is it Legoes?
Caroline

LEGOS. Crazy Europeans.

You’ll know they’re plural when they’re all over the floor and you step on them.

It’s like you can have a brick wall, but five bricks. Or a stone wall, but five stones. It’s a Lego wall, built of Legos.

Hmph.

For my next trick, I will loudly argue that it’s a basket, not a trolley.

(Hint: I do not really take this seriously.)
Maurik

Wow its like Math and Maths. It’s called regional dialects. There’s no right or wrong.
Takuan

you mean s shopping buggy?
crenelle

I go by what the toy company says it is, that Lego is singular and plural. To me, Legos is in the same dictionary as nukular.
Antinous

Lego art. Grammar lecture. Not much of a trade.
eustace

Lego is both a toy and a mental discipline, like a martial art. The enlightened Lego master can disassemble and reassemble domains of reality into new configurations. And even among these masters, some use the word Legos. Go figure.
Agent 86

iz be in uR engrish, maken teh legos legitz
BastardNamban

Let me be the first to say how awesome I find this.

I imagined the legos as a sort of paralell world effect, melting into our world through cracks in the space time continum, or something. To see such fragmented color next to centuries old stone is a great effect!

Another thought was that buildings were actually made by legos, and plastered over with stone and brick facades to look respectable, now crumbling away. Either way, it’s quite beautiful.

But just how did he/she fill the cracks? Did they use glue of some kind to hold them there? It didn’t say.
Linds

This kind of stuff is why I visit BB. You make me giggle. Keep up the silly work
cha0tic

Well Teresa, for what it’s worth it’s Grey, Cheque and colour (amongst others) Now if you’d all just apologise for wasting that tea at Boston, we’ll welcome you back into the commonwealth and get rid of that moron you call president :)

Hmmm. Then you have to put up with the Dolt we’ve got as Prime Minister. Sorry, probably not the most persuasive of arguments.
BubbaFett

If you have a problem with the way people pluralize brand names and want to incorporate the rules of grammar intended by the manufacturer, you might be right, but you really need to find something else to worry about.

Sort of like getting upset if someone asks if you have a box of Kleenexes instead of a box of Kleenex.

“But Mr. Kleenex says Kleenex is both singular and plural!”

Get a life.
Takuan

better the Dolt today than the Baboon yesterday
Biscuit4

this looks awsome and is a great idea but it’s fake. I’m putting the Golden Gate bridge up 4 auction. Opening bid is one hot wheels. Do I hear two?
Bazilisk

Coincidences are freaky. I just wrote a short story with a scene that is a lot like this. Woah.

Also, what a great idea. I want to copy it.
PPixie

I just have to toss out that LEGO is a company name. The thingies are LEGO bricks (there are other shapes, too, but bricks are the most familiar.)

But it’s really neither here nor there since we should simply be admiring someone’s craft, not correcting word pluralization!

And what a lovely craft it is!
Takuan

mid way between Reprap and grey goo lies the Lego Replicator.
padster123

beautiful.
eustace

Takuan – have you considered the custom Lego possibilities of the Reprap?
RJ

If you’re American and you grew up in the 80′s and maybe early 90′s, they are – and always will be – “Legos.”

It doesn’t matter what the brand name actually is. It’s printed on the box, and that’s good enough. Telling me I’m wrong simply means you don’t get it.

I played with Legos as a kid, and they were fun. Legos, man. Frickin’ LEGOS. But I never thought to patch walls with them. It looks a little crazy, frankly. I think I’d rather just see the old brickwork by itself.
Zergonapal

This is wonderfully annoying.
elfajio

Legi.
Takuan

@19, oh yeah….. the only problem is that Lego magic is in the interference fit of the pieces. Can Reprap be that tight? If so, the pornographic possibilities boggle the perverted mind. (mine)
Takuan

Yes,” I said, “let us be gone.”

“For the love of God, Montresor!”

“Yes,” I said, “for the love of God!”

But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud –

“Fortunato!”

No answer. I called again –

“Fortunato!”

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last Lego into its position; I snapped it in. Against the new Lego wall I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
Keith

A gaggle of Lego?
RJ

@23

Ah, an excerpt from “The Cask of Red Kool-Aid.” I love that story.
eustace

Grey – it’s the new blaque.
eustace

My favorite will always be “The Sound of the Tell-Tale DC Electric Motor.” (wipes tear from eye)