Image courtesy of LEGO

The Guinness World Record for “Longest Plastic Toy Train Track” goes to the 80 LEGO enthusiasts who gathered in a Danish gym. Construction of the track took about six hours, while it took four more hours for the train itself to travel the length of the track. What a suspense-filled event!

One can imagine a bunch of serious-minded adults wresting some of the 93,307 LEGO elements away from their children, with the resultant layout winding regularly like the Chartres labyrinth. Still, at 4000 meters (12,000 feet) long, it is a major accomplishment; the participants won’t have to indulge in that sitcom trope of going for “most Guinness World Record attempts.”

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Stowed away in giant plastic tubs, scattered on the floors of closets, and assembled into Star Wars X-Wings propped on boys’ dressers all around the world is a whole lot of…potential.  We’re talking about Legos here, the over-half-a-century-old, polychromatic plastic bricks that have experienced renaissance after renaissance in the past few years, many thanks to the Internet and its penchant for spectacle. We’ve watched the uses for Legos multiply like gremlins in a swimming pool (see here, here, and here), but at last someone has taken the time to pause and contemplate the ultimate Lego project: Building something with all the Legos in the entire world.

Yes, what if we dismantled all those Lego Robie Houses, Hogwarts castles, and this guy’s crazy Lego pop-up structure and harnessed all 472 BILLION little bricks produced between 1958 and 2013 to use toward one end? The hypothetical sounds a little “Great Leap Forward,” but the results — illustrated in an infographic for real estate blog Movoto — are quite fascinating. Should we opt for the 46,826 medium-sized houses? Or the 66 Burj Khalifas? Or maybe just one colorful Pyramid of Giza? See the entire infographic after the jump.

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The footbridge is underrated. It really doesn’t get enough love, though we can’t figure out why. They’re necessary, functional, and economical, packing a lot of sculptural form in a neat, capsule-sized dose. Call them flyovers, elevated paths, people-movers, or whatever, we love them.

And we really like this new footbridge design by architect Michael Jantzen, who’s known for his eccentric designs (see this Transformer house for proof). This pedestrian bridge is particularly cool because it looks like it’s made out of LEGO. Seen from the roadway, that is, in elevation, the structure appears to be a large mass of the plastic bricks, with a stepped outline that could have been lifted from an 8-bit video game. According to Jantzen, the bridge, which is just a concept for now, can be made out of any material, though he’s thinking pre-cast concrete would be best.

More than that, Jantzen says the design reimagines what a footbridge can be. His version comprises three parallel rows; the outer two are undulating paths that sandwich a smooth, rolling ramp. “Those who want to exercise more vigorously while crossing the bridge, might want to take the stairs. Those on a bike, skateboard, or wheelchair, might choose to use the ramp.”

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No one, I repeat, no one can do LEGO like Mike Doyle can. We’ve previously spotlighted his Halloween-themed LEGO sculptures, which used approximately 130,000 of the famed plastic bricks to build large models of crumbling Victorian houses. Now, Doyle is back with a larger and much more ambitious project: Contact 1, the first entry in a series of thematically-linked works that celebrate “terrestrial contact events, spiritual beings and unique worlds.” Wait, whaaaa?

Doyle’s series will shed light on more elevate states of beings through the manically detailed, impressively constructed cities he has and continues to build. With Contact 1, he’s built an imaginary city of near Minas Tirith-like scale, complete with pixelated towers, forests, and waterfalls. It’s called Odan, home to an enlightened species that evolved from us but dropped the lousy inter-species killing thing, and it is dedicated solely to the development of its inhabitants cultural and spiritual needs. It also took Doyle 600 hours to assemble the huge 5 X 6 feet-wide project, which comprises 200,000 LEGO bricks and a whole lot of nonsense. Whether you buy into or are intrigued by Doyle’s conceptual backstory or not, his creation is stunning in many ways. Click through for more photos! 

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To celebrate its 15th birthday as a design firm, Turin-based Nucleo wanted to give back to its supporters. For the occasion, the company re-imagined its Histogram Table in 3,193 LEGO bricks, a self-professed “affordable” take on the €2,500 original. And by affordable, Nucleo means free: the design is intended to be built by anyone, so long as they have a couple thousand primary-color LEGOs lying around. Click through for more.

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Critics of BIG poke fun at the blocky, elemental formalism that the firm employs — or did, at least in their earlier projects — by likening them to mountains of LEGOs. Bjarke seemed to be in on the joke when he (and a poor team of interns) built a gigantic 250,000-piece LEGO model at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in 2007.  The installation played to BIG’s critics and advanced Bjarke’s, admittedly sketchy, “hedonstic sustainability” agenda, balancing architectural “research” in form and program with unabashed, if unironic, fun. Six years later, Bjarke is embarking on another LEGO venture.

BIG will design the first ever LEGO museum in Billund, Denmark, according to a report by Architect Magazine. Known as the LEGO’s “Brand House,” the project’s function is being described as a “public museum and experience center.” The architect envisions an open museum with walls of “user content of such a high quality,” though what that says of the project’s spatial program, or even curatorial approach, we’re not sure. If you’re having any doubts, put them to rest. ”It will be the best museum ever,” Ingels promises—yes, EVER.

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You can build most anything (not too curved) in LEGOs, but your finished product will differ somewhat from the real-life building you’re mimicking. It’s an inherent problem of the format—how do you reconcile scale, form, and building detail with the chunky imprecision of LEGO bricks?—and one rarely engaged with, let alone overcome. But then a LEGO model comes along that blows this and your brain to bits.

Today, that’s this pixelated model of Hogwarts castle from the Harry Potter films. Designed by Alice Finch, the construction recreates the entire castle complex, using some 400,000 plastic bricks to do so. Finch’s piece, which took “best in show” at the 2012 BrickCon (!), features all of the detailed nuances you’d find in a scale model. The brickwork is articulated for texture and relief, as are the roof tiles. Turrets are expertly rendered, colonnades are fully spatial, and the whole thing is even rigged with night lights. Still, the best part is inside. Click through for more.

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The Henry Ford / Living History magazine

Adam Reed Tucker is a grown man with a seemingly childlike ambition: to build a world out of LEGOs. As one out of only 11 LEGO Certified Professionals, Tucker has made it his mission to work with and explore the possibilities of the little plastic bricks, regarding them not as toys but, as he told Living History magazine, his “artistic medium.”

According to an interview with The Chicago Tribune, Tucker began his career designing luxury residences, but when the housing market/entire economy started to sink, he found himself out of a job and back at home with his parents. He tinkered around, brought some samples to a LEGO convention, and caught the company’s attention. Now, he runs a company called Brickstructures that’s contracted to design kits for LEGO. And he’s just signed on to be a part of Architizer’s A+ Awards jury, where he’ll bring his imagination and boundless drive to reenvision the limits of architecture. The deadline for entry to the awards is today, so get your entry in ASAP. Click through to see 10 classic buildings Tucker has reworked for LEGO.

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Whoever is curating LEGO’s Architecture series has our approval. The legendary toymaker has already pixelized some fantastic, if obvious, buildings, from the Villa Savoye to the Farnsworth House and, of course, Fallingwater. Now, LEGO has announced the next classic to be immortalized in the plastic colored bricks. Frank Lloyd Wright’s tragically demolished Imperial Hotel will be the first of the LEGO “Architect” sets to be released in 2013, setting the bar high for the coming toy year. Continue.

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Product: Recreate the Big Ben Clock Tower with LEGO® Architecture in a building set featuring the iconic details of this world-famous landmark! Created by architects Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, the Neo-Gothic Elizabeth Tower was named in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II in her Diamond Jubilee Year. The structure only took the nickname of Big Ben later, the origins of which are still hotly contested. The LEGO Big Ben set includes 346 pieces, standing just short of 8 inches tall when fully erect (a shy comparison to the tower’s actual 316 ft. height.)

Manufacturer: LEGO

Retail Price: $29.99

Click through to learn how to win!

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