LEGO HOUSES

by Loui Tucker

I love building things with the Lego blocks called Duplos. They are, as you will see, larger and more brightly colored than the traditional Lego blocks. It's a very therapeutic activity, a great way to spend a rainy Saturday, and I get to play architect (the career I didn't pursue...).  

Some are photos and a few are little movies (25-30 seconds) that I used because of moveable parts (Hogwards House). They can be played on your Windows Movie player.  

These videos and later stills are in random order. Some of them are larger because I gradually acquired more blocks.

Enjoy!

  1. The Hogwarts House has a moving staircase. The stairway leads to a window. In one position (when the bottom step is even with the front of the house), a side passage is open and a room in the back is isolated. If the stairway is pushed forward (so that the first step emerges from the front of the house), then the side passage is blocked and the room in the back gains access to the rest of the house.
  2. The House with Heliport has a staircase. At the top of the staircase, in one direction, is a window that looks out on an enclosed balcony. In the other direction is a heliport for the helicopter. The heliport sits above a space for the land vehicle. Look closely and you'll see the heliport has twin beacon towers.
  3. The Docking Station appears to be one structure. Unhook the two holding bricks, and half of the house rolls away on wheels. The two sections have matching towers and the towers line up through a high window.
  4. The Moving Inner Wall is a house with a wall running through the middle that slides from side to side. In one position the opening at one end of the structure is closed and the opening at the other end is closed. Move the wall and the openings reverse -- the closed one is open, the open one is closed.
  5. The Lego Victorian took three tries to get it right. It has a front porch, an internal staircase, a dramatic roofline with two chimneys (living room and kitchen), a back entry, two rooms upstairs with a sleeping porch. As with many Victorians, modifications have been made over time. This time it was to enclose the original simple back steps to make a small covered porch.
  6. The Village was the result of a challenge to myself to build only with what was available in a certain color or color combination. I also decided to use the red wheels for a roof structure (and why not?).
  7. The High-Rise with Underground Parking is what it says, and it was fun to build.
  8. The City Square has a central square or garden surrounded by three tower complexes.
  9. The House with Two Doors is just that -- a house with two doors. That move. They aren't on hinges (hard to do with Lego/Duplo) but are sliding doors. If this house looks a bit bigger than the others it is because I bought a plastic bag of miscellaneous Duplo pieces at a flee market. This is video clip is a big longer so it's also bigger than the other files, and takes a few more seconds to download.
  10. The Cantilevered House was my exercise in cantilevering, to see what kind of structure I could build on a very small base. This is not a movie, just four still shots.
  11. The Rainbow Layers House was designed to show off the colors in layers, but still keep the resulting tower interesting architecturally. For example, I used the four "cars" to build an internal staircase. This is not a movie, just a series of still shots.
  12. The Symmetrical House challenged me to build a side-by-side duplex (or it could be a large symmetrical single house). Except for a few places where the brick colors do not match (and I hid them), the house is the same from side to side. The front has two separate entrances, identical trees in front of identical front windows, and a shared balcony. I put in mock-bay windows without the glass on the outer corners. The back has one entrance that divides where the tiny figure is standing, and another shared balcony. One central chimney is shared and each has a separate chimney as well. Oh, and there are two identical cars in front!
  13. The Beach House was supposed to be a home on stilts, with a staircase leading from the "beach" level to the first floor. As it turns out, this is also the design of many of the newest townhomes: A garage at street level, stairs leading to the first floor (living room, dining room, kitchen) and bedrooms on the third floor. What you will see is actually two apartments. There is a second staircase leading away from the landing of the main red staircase landing.
  14. The Apartment is a three-story apartment building. I used the same red staircase as the Beach House, but now there is a ground-floor apartment with a garage, a second floor with an entrance on the side, and a third floor apartment with a roof garden.
  15. The Dollhouse is my tribute to anyone who loved dollhouses as a child (I did!). Two stories with kitchen and living room (with a fireplace) downstairs and two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. What fun this was to build!
  16. As a follow-up to The Villages above, I tried a Business Park. This has three large buildings laced with a green walkway complete with trees.