The assignment for this year’s White House holiday display came with a tight deadline. A team of Lego master builders, within two-and-a-half weeks, had to create 56 unique gingerbread houses out of the toy bricks, one for each state and US territory.
For this group, it was child’s play. The seven masters at the US headquarters of Lego Systems in Enfield had them designed, built from more than 200,000 Lego pieces and transported in a van to Washington in time for the unveiling.
“We had an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing,” said Paul Chrzan, one of the master builders. “We basically gave ourselves a day for each house. And we just built like crazy.”
Photo: AP
The team prides itself on building just about anything out of Lego bricks, including, among other recent projects, scenes for The Lego Movie, a replica of Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics and a life-size statue of Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.
Promoted to the highest ranks for their skills, the master builders fulfill a marketing role for the Denmark-based company, but also see themselves as inspiring young builders.
The team of seven — including a former pastry chef, a retail worker and an actor — works in the model shop, a building down a slight hill from the administrative offices that features a Lego Christmas wreath on the walls, designers at computers and the sounds of builders tinkering with the latest structures.
Some, like Chrzan, 55, had a Lego affinity from childhood, when his Danish mother was among the first in his neighborhood to buy the sets. Others did not play with Lego as much as kids, but studied sculpture or fine arts in school. All see the toy brick as a medium for artistic expression.
Master builder Pete Donner got his start as a model gluer out of high school in 1997.
As a child, he said he was awful at building Lego sets, preferring to set aside the instructions.
He said that helped him win the job he has now.
“For each one of us it’s a unique journey,” he said. “The secret to my success is I drew a lot and I built a lot.”
While children and adults alike are awed to hear about his work, he said it is a job, with real deadlines and customer expectations.
He said he keeps the stress in perspective by remembering a zinger from a retired colleague’s wife who told him after a rough day: “Oh, Steve, what’s the matter, did you run out of yellow brick today?”
Advances in technology over the past 20 years have dramatically changed the job, with proprietary Lego software churning out rough blueprints that once had to be etched by hand on graph paper. Still, a life-size model of a character can take 70 to 150 hours to design and 350 hours to build.
The models go on display at fairs and retail stores or are commissioned by promotional partners.
One master builder, Erik Varszegi, said the deadline pressure sometimes leaves him feeling jealous of the amateur builders outside the company who sometimes spend a year or longer on projects of their own design.
Donner said he builds with Lego even after finishing his day’s work.
In addition to building with his two daughters, he has his own side projects.
“I have access to the biggest Lego collection in the world,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I utilize that?”
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS