To build his giant Lego structures which usually take hundreds of thousands of bricks, Hungarian artist Balazs Doczy first must solve major “engineering challenges.”
“Every structure has an Achilles’ heel. Once it is solved, the rest of the work is easy,” the 48-year-old said.
He needed 90 helpers for one of his most recent works — a life-sized Lego tram made up of a staggering 1.8 million pieces.
Photo: AFP
Together they put in around 6,800 hours to assemble Doczy’s most ambitious project that is now on display in a bustling square in central Budapest.
The 11-meter-long Lego tram — commissioned by Budapest’s transport companies and its tourist office to “public transport and creativity” — has attracted droves.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Malaysian tourist Lucas Chang, 32, while dance coach Barbara Rajnai said children in her son’s and daughter’s kindergarten told them to check it out.
Photo: AFP
‘MEGASTRUCTURES’
A professional Lego artist for more than 10 years, Doczy works more like an architect than a builder, relying on specialist software to draw up plans and only assembling bricks when he needs to test out a particular design.
“Initially, I do preliminary sketches much like a painter, stacking bricks on each other in a digital environment,” he said.
“I set up the scale, identifying recognizable elements and proportioning the other parts relative to that.”
For his intricate dioramas, such as his model of the Heroes’ Square in Budapest, every piece has to imitate a specific detail.
In “megastructures” such as the tram, imperfections even as small as a tenth of a millimeter could stack up, leading to instability, he said.
“I always compare it to quantum mechanics and gravity: in a smaller scope matter behaves differently than on a grander scale,” he said.
Thus blocks are glued together, an internal frame is added for extra support and experts are consulted to ensure structural integrity.
Doczy also added some baseplates on its sides to allow people to place their own Lego bricks, which “has always appealed to me, because it allows anyone to express their creativity and transform the sculpture into a community piece.”
Doczy was fascinated with Lego at an early age, assembling bricks with his older brother, though Western products were in short supply in then-communist Hungary.
“We begged the neighbor’s kids to bring their sets too, so we could build bigger structures. We had ambitions even back then,” Doczy recalled.
His childhood passion was reignited years later when his nephew became captivated by the colorful blocks.
When he looked at his brother, “our eyes lit up and we realized we should start building again,” Doczy said.
Moving back to Hungary from Indonesia — where he had been teaching diving — he and his brother set up a business called “Brick Workshop” in 2013 to create Lego designs and organize activities for children and adults.
‘TOO VALUABLE TO THROW’
In 2014, Doczy’s Lego model of Budapest’s iconic St. Stephen Basilica was featured at a Guinness World Record attempt, when volunteers constructed the world’s highest Lego tower at the time in front of the basilica.
Three years later, he was officially recognized as a “Lego certified professional” (LCP) by the Danish company.
The coveted title — currently held by around two dozen creators — is awarded to talents who “create stunning, innovative designs that help push the boundaries of creativity and engineering,” a Lego spokesperson said.
The perks are being able to regularly consult with other LCPs and access Lego’s sculpting software that allows Doczy to order “from the 14,000 different pieces in production,” he said.
But for some projects, he has to scour the thriving second-hand market to search for pieces. Luckily for him, even bricks from the 1970s can be found there.
“As a diver, I’ve never seen Lego bricks pulled out of the sea,” said Doczy, who divides his time between Budapest and the Spanish island of Mallorca. “They are just too valuable to be thrown away.”
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
Each week, whenever she has time off from her marketing job, Ida Jia can be found at Shanghai Disneyland queuing for hours to spend a few minutes with Linabell, a fluffy pink fox with big blue eyes. The 29-year-old does not go empty handed, bringing pink fox soft toys dressed in ornate custom-made outfits to show the life-sized character, as well as handmade presents as gifts. Linabell, which made its debut in Shanghai in 2021, is helping Disney benefit from a rapidly growing market in China for merchandise related to toys, games, comics and anime, which remained popular with teenagers and young
RSS