LEGO has set another Guinness World Record, this time in the category of largest caravan built with interlocking plastic bricks. Taking 12 weeks, 1,000 man-hours, and 215,158 pieces to construct, the final product is truly a marvel. The caravan is true to real teardrop trailer dimensions - mandatory to be considered for the record - making those who enter feel right at home with all the essential trailer necessities. The trailer is on display at the Motorhome & Caravan Show 2015 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK now and will be found at LEGO’s BRICK 2015 fan event later this year. The 2.2m tall and 3.6m long vehicle may not be able to be taken on the road, but the details would make anyone do a double-take. Structurally, the interior is equipped with a bed, dining table with seating, and kitchenette. The kitchen sink actually runs water and the electrical lighting is fully functional. The simulated elements are spot-on, as well, such as a mini fridge to keep your milk and veggies cool.
Related: First bricks laid for BIG’s LEGO house in Denmark Craig Glenday, Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief, reportedly said, “How better to celebrate 130 years of leisure caravanning than with a world record? Record-breaking is particularly fascinating when two worlds collide – in this case, the worlds of caravanning and LEGO building!” Guinness was on the scene to present the award when the final brick was laid. With another milestone under its belt, we are left to ask: What will LEGO do next?It could be the biggest bargain on the property market: a two-storey house that’s being given away for nothing. The only drawback is that this des res is made entirely out of Lego – and you’ll have to find somewhere to put it.Top Gear presenter James May has just built the world’s first full-size Lego house – including a working toilet, hot shower and a very uncomfortable bed – using 3.3million plastic bricks. Toy storeys: James May and 1,000 helpers built the 20ft-tall Lego house on a wine estate in Surrey
Stripe me: A close up of the fully functional house, which was built using 3.3million differently coloured bricks About 1,000 volunteers built the 20ft-tall house in Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, Surrey – but now the vineyard needs the land back toIf no one collects it by 8am on Tuesday, it will be hacked to bits with chainsaws. May says Legoland reneged on a deal to take it to their theme park in Windsor, Berkshire, after deciding it would be too expensive to move. Meanwhile, miffed Legoland managers criticised May for building the house without their help.May said: ‘I’m very unhappy about it. I feel as if I’m having my arm twisted into saying “knock it down”. Blocked sink: The bathroom with a working taps and basin made from Lego Cosy: James in the bedroom - and you'll never guess what he made the bed, pillows and slippers from! Purrfect: The home even comes with its own cat ‘Legoland only told us on Thursday they were not going to take it.
Block head: The TV presenter built the house for his forthcoming BBC show, James May Toy Stories 'Knocking it down is just wrong on every level. really lovely thing – it would break the hearts of the 1,000 people who worked like dogs to build it.’ May believes that an art gallery, a children’s home or a wealthy private collector might be interested in the house. entrepreneurs hoping to make money from it would face legal problems as Legoland has an exclusive licence to use the plastic bricks as a public Lego has also banned May from dismantling the structure and giving away the bricks, which the company donated for his forthcoming BBC show James May’s Toy Stories. ‘It would dilute Lego’s sales – we can only give them to charity,’ May said. May slept in the house on Friday night, on ‘the most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever slept in’ – when he also discovered the house was not waterproof. Martin Williams, marketing director of Legoland Windsor, said: ‘We’re
disappointed we were not consulted as our model-makers could have advised on building a movable structure. ‘In our opinion, the only way to move the Lego house now is to cut into it, which would compromise the structural integrity and present us with Plastic fantastic: James in the multi-coloured hallway Building blocks: James even used Lego to make kitchen utensils, including a toaster, whisk, bread bin and iron Daily Block: The home, which is unwanted by Legoland, also includes reading material 'We considered all the options but due to timings, logistics and planning permission, we have decided it would not be viable to move the structure to the park.’Earlier this year the TV presenter made his debut in the Chelsea Flower show with a garden made entirely out of plasticine. in Plasticine boasted palm trees, bushes, a vegetable patch, grapevine, lawn, rockery and pond and featured two and a half tonnes of plasticine in 24 different colours.
The 46-year-old claimed his effort is the biggest and most complex plasticine model ever made. He produced the the garden as part of his BBC 2 series James May's Toy Stories, where he aimed to 'get kids out of their bedrooms and away from their Playstations'. Bright idea: James stares through a multi-coloured window as light pours in the homeToy fads come and go, but Lego is in no danger of pulling a Tamagotchi. Revenue is up, more movies are on the way, and complex building kits continue to burn up the free time of kids (and adults) worldwide.All this leads us to wonder: If Lego continues its slow march toward world domination, what are the odds that some lovable maniac will construct an entire life-size home from the colorful plastic bricks? And at what cost?We contacted designer Sean Kenney, one of only a dozen or so LEGO Certified Professionals on the planet. Yes, that’s his job title—reserved for people who are, he said, “actively, physically, tangibly using their product in some creative and commercial manner” and engaging with the public.
He and his team have built life-size polar bears, 6-foot-tall dogs, and portraits made from nothing but plastic bricks. The dude knows how to tackle big projects and is regularly asked to think on a grand scale using nothing but tiny parts.As an artist and designer, his work isn’t cheap. But a life-size house? That’s a different set of bricks. “Let’s take a microcosmic example,” Kenney said. “A four-foot-by-eight-foot sheet of drywall costs about $10 at the hardware store. If I just wanted to build a sheet of drywall—not a house but just the drywall—it’s about $2,000 retail for the Lego bricks. And then you need the labor. It’s about 9,000 pieces in that sheet of drywall.” Assembly time for that one sheet: about a week.So, let’s get crazy and assume this house is being financed by an eccentric billionaire with mountains of cash to burn. Even money can’t conquer physics.“The interesting thing that we all know about gravity is that it likes to pull things down,” Kenney said.
Which isn’t a problem if you’re building toward the sky and creating monolithic Lego structures. But, he said, “when you want to do a large horizontal thing, that’s tough. That’s why we have I-beams … and stuff we build big, strong things with.”Lego, of course, doesn’t offer huge, 12-feet long pieces. A Lego I-beam would have to be “built from thousands of little pieces and they’re going to want to split apart.” Ditto for ceilings and floors.So that’s one huge challenge. The other large hurdle, Kenney explained, is that in standard construction, nothing is perfectly straight. Your home can be a tenth of a degree off its foundation, or a wall may jut out by a sixteenth of an inch, and that’s OK. You can bend and shimmy wood and other building materials without causing any major structural issues. But Lego bricks are incredibly precise blocks. They can’t be forced or shimmied.Take your foundation, for example: “Say you pour a concrete slab. It’s probably as level as it would ever need to be for the intents and purposes of a home, but compared to the hundredths of a millimeter in Lego bricks, there are pits and pocks and slopes and valleys all over the place, and so the challenge of trying to work around that without getting cracks and fissures in the Lego model would probably be the single biggest physical challenge that you could face.”
So, is the idea of building a Lego house impossible? In fact, the BBC’s James May (along with a merry crew) built a home using over 816 million Lego bricks in 2009. The house, a feat of engineering and enthusiasm, has since been deconstructed after a bid to sell it to Legoland in Windsor fell through. But are traditional construction materials in any danger of being usurped by Legos?A house, especially one that someone intended to live in on a daily basis, would be an enormous expense, surely in the millions of dollars. Insurance would be astronomical as there’s a very real chance the home could collapse at any moment. Adding insult to possible injury, Lego bricks aren’t water-tight.So, to summarize: If you had the bank account of Scrooge McDuck, the architectural genius of Howard Roark, and an infinite amount of patience, you could do it. But, ask yourself, would you want to live in a Lego house? Maybe for a few hours, but we’re guessing that sleeping on Lego sheets might not be the life you dreamed of building.