Vancouver designer turns heads with landmark replicas made of Lego The Pacific Central Station replica took roughly 36 hours and around 5,500 pieces of Lego to create. Katelyn Verstraten, Online Reporter / Editor, CTV Vancouver A local designer is garnering attention for his latest pieces: miniature models of Vancouver landmarks made out of Lego. Comprised of thousands of pieces of Lego and sometimes taking hundreds of hours to complete, Johnathon Vaughn’s incredible replicas include Pacific Central Station and Save-On-Meats. “It’s interesting when you talk about Lego – everyone approaches the subject matter with a smile,” said Vaughn. “Sometimes they’re either laughing with you or at you, but there’s always engagement of humour and joy." The Save-on-Meats project was completed with his brother, and took the duo more than 200 hours of work and 5,000 pieces. The Pacific Central Station replica took roughly 36 hours, and around 5,500 pieces of Lego.
“It’s not like when you go to the Lego store and get a set and all of your pieces are predetermined and it comes with very intrinsic instructions on how to see it through,” Vaughn said. “A lot of it is exploration…you might spend hours building something only to dismantle it because it didn’t work, or developing a new technique to see it through.” Vaughn, who was born and raised in East Vancouver, is president of the B.C. chapter of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. He also owns a design firm, The Notice Group, and lives and works in Gastown. His love of Vancouver – especially his neighbourhood – helped spur his Lego projects. “I define Gastown as the only true neighbourhood in Vancouver. Not to dismiss any of the neighbourhoods, but for me it’s where it all began,” he said. “I love my neighbourhood, and I love some of the icons in the neighbourhood - both people and buildings.” His innovative work hasn’t gone unnoticed: Vaughn says he recently received a commission to create a Lego replica of an iconic building in Gastown, although details are still under wraps.
He’s also modifying his Pacific Central Station piece to make it “a bit more architecturally correct” as the model will be displayed for the station’s upcoming 100th anniversary. Looking forward, the designer’s goals include recreating the entire intersection of Gastown’s Water and Carrall Streets, as well as the iconic Waterfront Station. His Lego hobby may be a creative outlet, he adds, but it’s also been a way to spend time with family, including his brother and nephew. “For me it’s been a wonderful way of reintroducing three-dimensional thinking, of light and form and composition, of basic principles of design – but also basic principles of family and relationships,” he said, chuckling. “I find it hilarious that Lego is a connective tissue, but at the same time I can’t deny the power of that as well.” Top stories from VancouverTadhg Dunlop is 11-years-old and, like a lot of kids his age, he loves Lego. He loves its nuances, how the different pieces fit with the different sets, and he loves shopping for Lego, alone, with the permission of his parents.
But at the Lego Store in Calgary’s Chinook Centre that’s a problem. Young Tadhg, whose house is 4.8 kilometres from the Lego Store door, hopped on his bike with $200 in his pocket — money earned from babysitting and doing chores — last Sunday and pedaled off to the mall to buy some Lego. His father, Doug, had groceries to get, and arranged to meet his son at the store later on. But when Doug arrived, there was a problem. Tadhg had been detained for the modern day crime of shopping alone. “Tadhg was in the corner of the store — he wasn’t mashed into the corner or tied up or anything — he was playing with some Lego, but probably feeling a little nervous, because a security guard was looking over his shoulder,” his father says. “I thought maybe he had done something wrong, like bumped a shelf, and had some Lego boxes fall off and get damaged. But I couldn’t even really imagine why he would be detainedBut I couldn’t even really imagine why he would be detained.”
Tadhg was a loyal customer. He had been shopping at the store by himself ever since he was nine. There had never been a problem before. And his Dad, while a Lego fan, though not of equal magnitude, had no problem letting him exercise his consumer choices without parental supervision. Tadhg rides his bike to school. He can find a bathroom. And he can count his money. So when a Lego Store employee initially approached him Sunday and started asking questions, he was flattered. Perhaps they had heard of his awesome Lego skills, and wanted to hire him? He had built a giant Lego locomotive in the past, and was working on a new monster project — an eight-wheeled off-road vehicle. Hence the trip to buy some more Lego. But the nice Lego employee had other motives. They wanted to know Tadhg’s age. And when he said 11, mall security was dispatched to the scene. Calls to Calgary’s Lego Store to inquire about Sunday’s bust were referred to the brand’s U.S. headquarters. Here is what they had to say:
“Our primary concern is for children’s safety and as such we have a policy regarding unaccompanied minors in our stores,” Michael McNally, a senior spokesperson for Lego, wrote in an email to the National Post. “As this customer was under the age of 12 and unaccompanied, our store staff followed our guidelines and alerted mall security.” Doug Dunlop is a child of the Seventies, an era where kids walked to school, climbed trees, played road hockey, jumped off swings, had chestnut fights — and playground play fights — and went to the store to buy their parents cigarettes. The 47-year-old electrical engineer understands the world has changed. He just didn’t realize how much. And it is not just a Calgary thing, but an everywhere, everyday thing: an irrational bludgeoning of parental authority and general commonsense that, in its absurd extreme, saw some RCMP officers recently issue a warning to a couple in B.C. for the crime of letting their four-year-old son play outside…naked.
“There has been a shift as to how overprotective we have become,” Dunlop says. “But it had not occurred to me that the shift was so severe as to prevent an 11-year-old from buying toys in a toy store.” (A Mastermind Toys store near where I live has no similar policy. The employee I spoke to said children, ages 10 or 11, often pop in unaccompanied by an adult to look around). Dunlop expressed his chagrin at the Lego Store rules to staff who, he says, suggested he was a bad parent for leaving Tadhg unattended, because bad things can happen when an 11-year-old boy shops alone in a Lego Store 4.8 km from his front door. Dunlop reasons that bad things happen everywhere. And that the worst thing that could happen in a Lego Store would be if a tall person were to reach for an item on a shelf, triggering a Lego avalanche that landed on his son’s head. A Lego Store district manager suggested another possible scenario, according to Dunlop: what if the mall was evacuated for an emergency, what then for Tadhg?