Lego City Natural History Museum: The Great Work Has Begun!

 You know that I am a Lego Maniac.  Infected by an older cousin in 1968.  I have the bona fides and the bricks to prove it!  Half of my basement is consumed by my Lego City, images from which I have shared here before.  

While I love everything Lego, I must admit that their modular buildings are a special favorite.  They inspire the latent architect in me.  They jive with my special gifted-ness.  And, they are just so dog gone fun to create.  I have all of the sets (in some instances multiple copies) since the very first Hotel and French Cafe.  That one came out over 10 years ago now, and by comparison to the latest ones, it's crude.  No interior details, a relatively simple, straightforward design with a few exterior flares.

When they come out I sometimes build them as is and add them to my Lego City, but more often than not I tweak them to fit and make sense in my existing layout.  For example, I double the size of the fire house and opened up the interiors to create a Fire Fighters Museum in the wake of my already existing and satisfying Modern Fire Station.  When they set out the bank, I completely intermingled it with my existing creation to the point that if both had their atoms scramble in a transporter accident on the USS Voyager, it wouldn't be any easier to separate their parts, while you can see the presence and influence of both.

Enter the latest modular building: The Museum of Natural History.  I have long imagine a museum of major scale in my Lego City, but I was inhibited by how daunting a proper construction would be.  The Lego offering is lovely, but lacking.  It has sparks of ideas that are amazing on a scale unworthy of the concept.  Granted, to do this one right would completely put it beyond any remotely reasonable price point.  It is a limitation that belongs to Lego, but not to me.

Living in the DMV, I have lots of museums to consider when conceptualizing mine.  The National Museum of Natural History, the Museum of American History, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space.  Add to that regional museums like the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh, the Natural History Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and overseas, the British Museum in London, in particular.  

Looking at Lego model's classic design, and thinking about modern adaptations I've seen in other museums, I began to formulate some possibilities.  One in particular was the use of glass domes to open up the interiors to the exterior world.  Anticipating this, I also purchased a couple of Lego Friends sets with large clear dome pieces (the Botanical Garden and the Igloo Adventure).  The Botanical Garden set proved very helpful in creating my exterior front courtyard.

 The Lego set has a foot print of 1536 pegs (six - 16 x 16 squares). I gave myself a footprint of 4096 pegs, or sixteen 16 x 16 squares.  The possibilities that a footprint over two-and-a-half times larger presents is amazing.  The Lego set is effectively two-stories tall.  I envision a structure three stories tall.  In doing so, I am also expanding the possibilities for exhibitions.  In my version the ground floor is Pre-history.  The main space is for dinosaurs with a current exhibition feature Dinosaur Babies.  The right wing will feature Precambrian creatures from the prehistoric oceans, while the left wing will feature early mammals with a focus on the Saber-toothed Tiger.  

The second floor will have both geology and ancient cultures.  I'm thinking a mix of Rome, Meso American, Japanese and Scandinavia.  The third floor with be about the universe, our solar system, human exploration and the evolution of human understanding.  All of this is subject to change with time.  So it's a squishy blueprint for now.

The base is divided into two separable sections, and each of the floors above that will be divided into three for a total of 8 modular constructions with at least three more on the roof.  All of this is resting in my head.  Here are some images from the initial work on the ground floor.  I will probably be working on this for the next several months.

I used two dark grey large base-plates in the front and two large tan ones in the back.  The idea of an inviting entrance was important to me, hence the courtyard design.

The purchase of the Lego Friends Botanical Garden set gave me ready access to bricks sufficient to create the serenity pond and fountain and unique flora like the tree.

Here, I have detached the back half to show the design of the main halls dual staircase.  Inspired by Moorish medieval examples.

The main floor tile design was limited in scope by the bricks I had, and so I framed it in white.

Then I set out to complete the space with a design that was symmetrical.

Behind the grand stairs above is a public restroom complete with sink, two toilets in private stalls and storage space for toilet paper!  Below is the back entrance/emergency exit with the office of the chief field paleontologist.  The office has a desk with a microscope, work table with fossils and storage for samples.

A bird's eye view of the work to date.  The blue tiles in the lower right wing are my first exploration of possibilities for the Precambrian Ocean displays.  I'm imagining something complimentary in shades of Green for the upper left wing.