Lego is having a sleepover at its newly-opened Lego House in Denmark.
In a bid to revive flagging sales, the Danish toy company has teamed up with Airbnb to allow one family to stay the night at its new attraction a 12,000 square-meter building filled with 25 million colorful plastic bricks.
There’s a parents’ bedroom that features a Lego cat, slippers, a coffee pot and even a newspaper made from the bricks. In the children’s bedroom there’s a Lego teddy bear, lamp and story book. Towering above the child’s bed is a six meter tall Lego brick waterfall, surrounded by a seemingly bottomless pool of — you guessed it — Lego bricks.
Photo: AP
“What I do as a job is I actually make the products that you can buy at the toy stores,” says Lego design manager Jamie Berard. “So, to do something like this outrageous waterfall or to recreate a bedroom out of what is currently not really a living space is a wonderful challenge.” The promotional effort comes as the company tries to find new ways to increase sales, which are falling for the first time in 13 years. Lego said in September it was cutting 1,400 jobs, or eight percent of its workforce.
Those who want to join Lego’s private sleepover must enter a competition and describe what they would build if they had an infinite supply of Lego bricks. The winner will get the chance to create their entry under expert supervision, as part of their stay.
Designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, Lego House opened in late September after four years’ building work. The attraction is located in central Billund, a small town in Danish Jutland where the toy company is headquartered.
Photo: AP
Towering at the building’s center is a 15 meter tall Lego brick tree, named the “Tree of Creativity” which took over 24,000 working hours to construct. Made from over six million bricks, it charts the gradual evolution of the toy company’s creations.
The competition launched on Thursday and is set to run to the middle of the month. The winner’s family will visit Lego House on Nov. 24.
This isn’t Airbnb’s first sleepover contest — last year, it invited people to spend a night next to the shark tank at Paris Aquarium and at “Dracula’s castle” in Romania. It was the first time Bran Castle welcomed overnight guests since 1948.
Photo: AP
The Lego experience is rather tame by comparison, unless barefoot visitors should unwittingly step on a stray Lego brick. Adults are advised to wear Lego-proof slippers just to be safe.
“I wish I was the one that could just sleep in here,” says seven-year-old Albert Landbo, who was visiting with his brother Gustav and their parents. Asked what creation he proposed for the competition, he said: “I think I would make a little baby husky.”
Photo: AP
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and