West London's iconic Trellick Tower has been recreated in Lego. It took two years.
Bricksmith Andy Donaldson 'ordered a job lot' of grey Lego bricks to recreate Ernő Goldfinger's brutalist masterpiece. It required more than 10,000 blocks and the patience of a saint.
"Trellick Tower has long been my favourite building," says Andy, "since I first lived in its shadow on moving to London from Aberdeen in 2004. I had toyed with the idea of recreating it in Lego for a while, and on moving to Edinburgh with work found myself with some time on my hands and decided to give it a shot."
The scale model stands almost a meter high and measures 60cm wide. "One of the hardest things was making it structurally sound," says Andy. The bigger it got the more often I had to go back and rethink, so I could prevent it twisting or buckling, particularly difficult with the arms to the Service Tower."
All very good, but what does one do with a metre-high brutalist simulacrum? "I’ve had several offers to buy it and a couple of requests to exhibit at events next year, which has been a pleasant surprise," Andy tells us. "However, at quite an early stage in building it I decided to give the finished piece to the Trellick Tower Residents Association on an indefinite loan. They’re building a display case for it in one of the Tower’s communal areas."
Andy has set up a Twitter account — @BrutalistLego — for his unusual hobby. He's now considering what to build next. The National Theatre, the Alexandra Road Estate in Kilburn and Alexander Fleming House (now Metro Central Heights) in Elephant are all candidates.
The multi-talented man also runs the LOLsome website terriblerealestateagentphotos.com, a compendium of truly awful estate agent photos, with witty captions.
