Legos are toys, but they inspire amazing designs. LEGO artists make use of tiny plastic bricks to build everything from robots to architectural models. Even the engineers at the company develop new components that allow builders to construct more complex models. Erik Varszegi is a Master Builder at the Lego Group, Billund, Denmark. He came up with the new element for this year’s model, the curved slope. It allows Lego users to create more slanted shapes while adhering the company’s strict colour palette. The slopes can also be used to create more dynamic shapes such as the curving staircase.
Certain Lego sets are the result of the work of professional designers and others are the product of the well-known Lego Ideas program. The Ideas line offers anyone the chance to create a set and then have it manufactured, and offers fame and a percent of sales to any designer who can convince 10,000 other designers that their lego designs from the movies design is worthy of being be made into a production. It’s not a surprise that the most extravagant and impressive sets tend to get the most praise, especially when they feature famous characters or scenes from movies or television shows, or in real life.
The best Lego designs are two iconic space-themed models: the NASA spaceship Discovery and an exact replica of the Hubble Telescope. Each telescope comes with a display plaque and an exact Lego version of its inventor. Other impressive models include frames of a rainbow, a steampunk dragon and a replica the Palace of Westminster.