
A group of LEGO and The Lord of the Rings fans have managed to create an awe-inspiring LEGO version of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, spanning over 200 square feet.
The idea for this amazing project was born at BrickWorld 2010, where Chris Phipson and Mark Kelso started talking about a collaboration. After going through some ideas, and concepts, Chris said “Hey, I got it… let’s do Lord of the Rings.” Obviously, Mark’s reply was along the lines of “You mean like… a few of us build Minas Tirith or Barad Dur?” But his LEGO loving friend had something much bigger in mind – he wanted to recreate ALL of Middle-Earth using LEGO.
When they first heard Chris’ monumental idea, most of the people involved in the project thought he was crazy, but after a bit of probing, the plan was put into action. As you can expect in a project of this magnitude, things didn’t exactly go smoothly from start to finish, but what’s important is many members of the LEGO building community helped out as much as they could. And, after a whole year of planning and building, the LEGO model of Middle-Earth was finally completed and showcased at BrickWorld 2011.
Inspired by fantasy buildings featured in sagas like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings , LEGO fan Gerry Burrows has built an awe-inspiring giant structure called the Garrison of Moriah.
Ever since he was just a kid, Gerry Burrows dreamed of building something big using LEGO bricks, but it was only after finishing college that he realized he finally had the freedom to pull it off. He began thinking about how he finally had the space and financial freedom to fulfill his childhood dream ‘without a little sister to rampage through my Lego creations’ so he called his realtor and told him he needed a LEGO room. As soon as he bought his first house he unpacked a box of his old LEGO bricks.
Even more impressive is how this LEGO master managed to create his Garrison of Moriah with very little planning. He made no initial plans, on paper or computer, but simply started assembling the bricks, focusing on individual structures. As he kept building he got inspiration on what direction to take to make his masterpiece looks as cool as possible. Amazingly enough he suffered no disasters during the entire building process.
Ben Caulkins, also known as Benny Brickster, spent the last six months working on a life-size costume of Halo’s Master chief, made from thousands of LEGO bricks.
Although he had some LEGO building experience, Ben admits he thought long and hard before taking on the task of building a real Master Chief costume. He was inspired by a fellow brickster’s awesome Boba Fett costume and by some of the works he admired at his first Brickworld LEGO convention. That’s when he really started thinking about it, and while it seamed only a dream at the time, but after a while he realized it was doable.
He decided to dedicate himself to the project, and started off by building Master Chief’s iconic helmet. He figured that if he could pull this off, he could build the rest of the costume as well. Benny spent a lot of time planning the building process, finding the right resources, getting its size just right so it would look proportionate with his body, and then he finally got to work. It turned out great with that golden motorcycle visor, and his work was picked up by sites like the Wall Street Journal and Gizmodo.
Paul Janssen spent over 1,000 hours and around 1,000,000 LEGO pieces to build an incredible replica of the Ohio State Buckeyes Stadium.
In order to build a realistic model of Ohio’s The Horseshoe Stadium, Janssen studied original measurements and satellite images, often using his trusty camera to take photos of interior details, during ball games. Originally from the Netherlands, this LEGO master didn’t even understand the game of American football,at first, but over time he grew to like it, and is now a big fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes and a season-ticket holder.
Paul Janssen spent three years just collecting the necessary LEGO pieces for his amazing replica, and had to improvise quite a bit on some details. For example, the Rotunda decor is made out of Dragon horns from a LEGO castle kit, while chrome truck parts serve as pipes extending from the stadium bathrooms. President of the Central Ohio Lego Train Club, Janssen traded for most of the necessary LEGO pieces, and thinks that if he had to purchase all of them, it would have set him back $50,000 to $75,000.
The 8 foot by 6 foot replica of the Ohio Stadium took 42-year-old Janssen over 1,000 hours to build, over the course of two years. And he did it all in his home basement, in Dublin, Ohio.
A team of five LEGO enthusiasts have spent half a year working on an awesome map of Europe made of LEGO bricks.
The idea of building a large-scale LEGO map of Europe was first brought up in 2009, at a LEGO Fan Weekend event, and after months of careful planning, Vanessa Graf, Tanja Kusserow-Kurth, Torsten Scheer, Bruno Kurth and Tobias Reichling decided to actually start working on it. They began laying the first bricks in April 2010, and with the help of LEGO fans from around the world, the quintet managed to complete their masterpiece in September.
The giant LEGO map of Europe numbers an impressive 53,500 bricks, covers an area of 3.84 x 3.84 and features iconic monuments from all around the Old Continent.
Remember the awesome LEGO Warship Yamato we featured a while back? Well, its supremacy as the world’s biggest LEGO ship on Oddity Central has come to an end. It’s now time for Lego Monster’s USS Intrepid to take its place.
Just like warship Yamato, the real USS Intrepid played a crucial role in several battles of the Pacific campaign of World War 2, and now acts as a war museum. That’s probably one of the reasons why Ed “Lego Monster” Diment chose to dedicate a large part of his free time to recreating it out of LEGO bricks. The LEGO USS Intrepid is bult at a scale of 1:40 and has 23 feet in length.
While it might look like the world’s biggest LEGO ship, that title actually belongs to a 7.66-meter-long container ship built by a group of German school children, this August.
If you want to see this epic masterpiece in real life, you can go to the Great Western Lego Show, in Swindon, UK.