Utrecht and Amsterdam are poised to be the first Dutch cities to get official LEGO shops, which should be open later this year, and nope, we don’t know where yet, but I’m fairly confident we will hear about it. Although LEGO franchises have opened in the Netherlands before, this is the first time LEGO itself will be opening a shop. The Danish manufacturer has about 130 official stores worldwide, including in Germany and France as far as close to the Netherlands is concerned.
Yes, it’s true, in North American English we say ‘legos’ instead of LEGO, to make it a plural, referring to the blocks. Once that Twitter conversation got going recently, someone came in with ‘but we also have Legolas’, referring to the Lord of the Rings characters, and we all had a good laugh and moved on.
Composer and pianist Jeroen van Veen of Culemborg, Gelderland built a life-size working piano using almost 30,000 pieces of Lego. As a huge Lego fan and composer, he wrote the ‘Minimal Prelude 18’ with the nickname ‘Lego music’, which features minimalistic sounds with many repetitions.
Building the instrument started as a bit of fun, something Van Veen did with his two adult sons. The piano is easy to put together and take apart, although they are careful when transporting it. Not only is it mechanically functional, but it is also a hybrid piano, with digital and analogue elements, possibly a world first.
People in the United States and in other countries want to have the piano over their way, so the Lego piano will probably be going on tour. The ‘brand name’ is Van Veen & Sons, a nod not only to how it was built, but also to the grand piano brand Steinway & Sons.
In the town of Ruurlo, Gelderland, pancake restaurant De Heijkamp is going to let a specialised 3D printer ‘make’ pancakes, albeit not every day. Owner Bert van Zijtvelt will be using the Pancake Bot, a successful Kickstarter project that became the world’s first 3D pancake printer that can make all kinds of cool pancakes (see video below).
Inventor Miguel Valenzuela, a Mexican-American expat living in Norway, credits one of his two daughters for the idea. He was reading an article about a guy who made a pancake stamping machine out of LEGO, when his daughter turned to her sister and yelled, “Papa’s going to build a pancake machine out of LEGO!” The prototype was actually made using LEGO, how cool is that.
Van Zijtvelt has bought two 3D printers, each costing USD 500 (450 euro). According to chef Rob Weijers, the biggest problem is getting the pancake batter just right, with not too much sugar in it, so it doesn’t jam things up.
De Heijkamp only plans on using the printers for special occasions like company events and children’s parties.
If you can get past a glaring spelling mistake and corporate dubstep with motor sounds, you can enjoy what the printer can do.
During a run through this year’s Amsterdam Light Festival, I came across the green BMW used to collect Lego for Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, located in front of the FOAM museum, Amsterdam’s photography museum.
After Lego refused to sell him Lego for an upcoming exhibition, Ai created an international network of collection points. Since 4 November drop-offs of Lego bricks have been accepted though the sunroof of a BMW car located in front of the Foam building at Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam. It looked quite empty, but then again filling up a car with Lego probably takes a while.
“On October 23rd, Ai Weiwei posted on Instagram: “In September Lego refused Ai Weiwei Studio’s request for a bulk order of Legos to create artwork to be shown at the National Gallery of Victoria [Australia] as ‘they cannot approve the use of Legos for political works’.”
Inspired by Theo Jansen’s ‘Strandbeest’ (‘Beach Animal’), Jason Allemann of JK Brickworks has built a creation called ‘Steampunk Walking Ship’ (see video below), entirely made of Lego components featuring several play features, including the functional cargo crane.
“Power and control is provided by the Lego Power Functions system, which includes the remote control, IR receiver, battery box and two M-size motors. The frame, crankshaft and legs are built using Lego Technic elements.”
British Lego fan Nick Barrett, who is into making his own creations with Lego, has completed a lovely version of the famous Rietveld Schröder house, located in Utrecht, including its interior and furniture, Rietveld design chairs and all.
A 34-year-old from Groningen paid for his drug addiction by stealing expensive Lego and Playmobil kits, Spitsnieuws reports.
The addict told the court his dealer accepted payment in toys. The boxes he stole from a local toy store were valued up to 190 euro a piece.
Algemeen Dagblad quotes his lawyer who explained the popularity of Lego as follows: “Lego is easy to shift. Once children have been exposed to their first brick, they’re hooked.”
The justice department demands 265 days imprisonment, of which 180 days are suspended. The papers do not say what the suspect is supposed to be addicted to.
Fueling addictions with Lego, even if they’re not addictions to Lego, could become a trend. In 2011 a 21-year-old woman from Dublin was convicted to 200 hours of community service for stealing Lego, Transformer toys and bubble bath sets to pay for her heroin addiction, Herald.ie writes.
Dutch 14-year-old Stijn Oom has taken his Lego blocks up a few levels and made some fantastic WWII creations without using pre-existing Lego kits. He started building serious models when he was just five and hasn’t stopped since.
Flickr has helped him connect with enthusiasts and surely helped boost his ever-increasing popularity. “When I discovered Flickr, I found out that there was a HUGE Lego community going on! Reactions on builds, comments, favorites! It was the perfect system for every young builder.” Flickr is used by Lego fans to share their creations and they like it because they can annotate their images.
Why doesn’t Lego make military sets like there? Because it’s part of the company’s policy to not make anything military, with the exception of the Star Wars kits.
Jeroen van den Bos and Davy Landman from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), a world-renowned scientific research institute specialised in mathematics and computer science, built a LEGO Turing Machine for the CWI’s exposition “Turings Erfenis” (‘Turing’s Legacy’) in honor of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday this year. The institute is known for creating the popular programming language Python, which is used by Google, while cwi.nl was one of the first national domain names ever issued in the world. The CWI played a pioneering role in connecting the Netherlands to the World Wide Web.
Enjoy the short documentary below and in true nerd fashion, you can read all about the making of this documentary by Andre Theelen right here.
“Alan Turing was an English mathematician who was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer,” say Wikipedia.
