Robot Claw

That’s the Sydney Opera House. It’s world famous. You all know it. Everyone knows it!

Thanks to the support of JBF and JAF, it was time to build my own. Here’s what it looked like in the box:

And what was inside:

The real Opera House is constructed of millions of kilograms of steel and glass and concrete, not to mention (exactly) 1,056,006 ceramic tiles. My version is a bit smaller, composed of only 2989 pieces of plastic. It won’t be less grand though!

The original Opera House was built in three distinct stages: The base/podium, then the roof, then the interiors. My version was build in four stages: Stage 1, 2, 3 and 4. Here’s a shot of the beginning of construction of Stage 1:

Here’s what Stage 1 looked like upon completion:

It may look simple enough, but there is some radical and unprecedented construction innovations in that piece of the podium, much like in the version in Sydney.

Here’s some in-progress shots:

Construction of the real Opera House took 15 years and ended up horribly behind schedule (by ten years in fact) and over budget (by more than 14x the original estimate of $7 million). Construction of my opera house had it’s ups and downs as well, not the least of which being a lack of necessary parts. A quick call to a supplier (otherwise known as ‘LEGO customer service’) remedied that problem but resulted in a delay of over two weeks inserted into the middle of construction. All told, I’d estimate about 20-25 hours were needed to finish it.

The original Opera House is 180 meters long and 65 meters high. My version is about 60 cm long and 25 cm high! In fact, it’s about as long and tall as Yossie and weighs about as much as well!

I loved making this kit, probably the most of any Lego kit I have ever made. Given my love for the original building, I can’t imagine how Lego may top this one. Unless they make the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

So how do I display such a massive piece? Well for now, like this:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2014 at 10:44 am and is filed under Blog, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.