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It's funny. Laugh. Toys Idle

Ancient Italian Walls Repaired With Lego Bricks 62

Posted by timothy from the best-of-old-and-new dept.
Ubuntukitten writes "When some walls in Bocchignano near Roma started to erode, the perfect solution was found in Lego bricks (although some look suspiciously like Duplo bricks to me). FTA: 'At first I thought it would be a complicated procedure to fit the pieces, But as it turned out, the bigger plastic pieces were compatible with the smaller ones, and the Lego held itself in place without any glue whatsoever.' I like the effect. It's like the scene has been created on the holodeck but a few holoemitters are broken ..."
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Ancient Italian Walls Repaired With Lego Bricks More

Ancient Italian Walls Repaired With Lego Bricks

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  • Call me old-fashioned (Score:4, Informative)

    by hahafaha ( 844574 ) * <lgrinberg@gmail.com> on Friday July 25, 2008 @05:43PM (#24342815)

    Am I the only one who thinks this is rather appalling? I mean, these are beautiful, ancient relics, now completely defaced.

    • Re:Call me old-fashioned (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JCSoRocks ( 1142053 ) on Friday July 25, 2008 @05:50PM (#24342891)
      No, it looks like crap. I love legos, but I also love architecture and ye olde buildings.... cheesy plastic bricks + old buildings = garbage.

    • Re:Call me old-fashioned (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25, 2008 @05:59PM (#24343003)

      its a wall. just about every wall in all of europe is some kind of ancient relic.

    • But...it's ART! How dare you question anything deemed art? Forgive me. I am just tired of every weird or eccentric stunt done by a self-proclaimed "artist" getting major attention.

    • I glowed with self-righteous self-satisfaction when Steven Spielberg digitally replaced the guns in the hands of the FBI agents in ET - The Extra-Terrestrial with walkie talkies.

      .

      Now all we've left to do is edit all smoking out of movies and make it look like Greedo shot first. Then the world will be perfect.

      .

      (This was sarcasm. Cold ironic sarcasm.)

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If this were an "official fix", then yes I'd agree with you.
       
      But it's just some jackass artist trying to get noticed. And he got himself in the Telegraph. Mission Accomplished.
       
      It even says in the article that they aren't glued in and are utterly temporary. Relax.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DavidYaw ( 447706 )

      Am I the only one who thinks this is rather appalling? I mean, these are beautiful, ancient relics, now completely defaced.

      Better than a pile of rubble.

    • Re:Call me old-fashioned (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nasajin ( 967925 ) on Friday July 25, 2008 @07:37PM (#24344101)

      Am I the only one who thinks this is rather appalling? I mean, these are beautiful, ancient relics, now completely defaced.

      Exactly! Lego should never be mixed with Duplo. It's a travesty!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flnca ( 1022891 )
        FYI, Duplo is manufactured by Lego as well. :-D Duplo are the bricks for younger children, while Lego are for older ones.
      • Lego and Duplo are owned by the same people, remember we all started with the Duplo train set, then we were all too poor to afford the electric powered Lego train set.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Keybase ( 156846 )

        Originally the bigger blocks were called LEGO as well. (About 30 years ago)

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Nasajin ( 967925 )
          Hahaha! Originally the bigger blocks were called 'stones', and that's what the building was made out of.

        • I called them 'Big LEGOs'...

          And the fact that the guy is surprised that they are compatible with the little ones proves that he didn't have a real childhood.

          Everybody knows that.

    • It did say it was temporary. Beautiful ancient relics is also disputable. TFA doesn't say that, these aren't ancient roman walls crumbling. Actually kind of looks like walls about a hundred years old in alleys that no one gives a crap about.

      And given that apperantly every fucking teen in Europe must at some point spray paint his or her name across some public fixture, putting legos next to a crumbling wall is not bad.

    • Go to Italy. There are tons of ruins and ancient walls Bocchignano being fairly minor. When you goto important places like rome and venice you'll notice that most of it is graffitied. Some wall being legoed is the least of italy's problems when the Colosseum is being defaced regularly.

    • They're crumbling walls and the Lego pieces are temoprary. What's the problem? Not every old wall is an ancient relic... some are just old walls.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's just a wall and the article never says anything about the antiquity of the wall. Nor do they look terribly beautiful. Did you look at the pictures? They look just like all the other stone walls found everywhere else.
       
      Anyways, it's just a publicity stunt by some artist. I don't think the bricks are going to stay there long.

    • This isn't actually related to what this guy did, but real restorations often are purposefully "ugly" so that you can tell the difference between the original material, and the restoration. This is to preserve the historical record.

    • You must be American. In Europe, people actually live and work in those ancient relics.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hazem ( 472289 )

      It is ghastly looking but the key is that they appear to be filling the hole and keeping the other stones from falling out of place. And more importantly, it's completely undo-able, which is an important value in any kind of preservation/restoration work dealing with relics.

      With this ugly patch, its obvious what is old and new and it can be undone by just plucking them out.

      Hopefully it's just a stop-gap with more significant repairs to follow that will be more aesthetically pleasing.

    • Personally I like it. It's something a bit interesting to look at and it's not like it's permanent.

      I think people from the Americas need to realise that we're surrounded by this kind of thing here in Europe. I mean my uni accommodation in my first year was 14th or 15th century (we never found out which in the end), so was at least three hundred years older than the US itself.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flnca ( 1022891 )
      I think it's beautiful! :-)

    • It's not like they couldn't be easily removed; the article states that they're not even glued in.

      Besides, the Beautiful Ancient Relic is just yesteryear's wall.

  • although some look suspiciously like Duplo bricks to me.

    Guess who makes Duplo bricks [lego.com]

  • IMHO (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sobieski ( 1032500 )

    I find this almost beautiful, more captivating than the original wall. Though if it wasn't there to support the wall, I wouldn't like it.

    Then it would just be like grafitti, art is relative... changing someone elses property's appearence is not acceptable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hurfy ( 735314 )

      Any artists want to come work on my basement foundation?

      Doubt labor is a whole less but i bet the legos cost a far bit more than new mortar :(

    • 1. Hmm, I dunno, I would think it depends more on whether the owner agreed to that kind of modification to their property. If the owners (or the city hall in the case of city property) actually agreed to have their walls repaired with Lego, or maybe in a sort of "doesn't matter with what" kinda contract, then it's ok. If not, it's still defacing someone else's property.

      I mean, think of it this way: let's say your house showed some signs of water damage, or maybe (minor) cracks after an earthquake. And I c

    • Though if it wasn't there to support the wall, I wouldn't like it.

      Are we supposed to take seriously the artist's opinon on whether this is a structural repair? I doubt that the bricks provide anything more than color.

  • My $0.02 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NoobixCube ( 1133473 ) on Friday July 25, 2008 @06:01PM (#24343027) Journal
    While I don't like the look of mixing the Lego and Duplo with the old architecture, it is an interesting idea. A more structurally sound version of Lego could, one day, be the standard tool for patching damaged walls. If the Lego were designed to be rough on the sides, it might hold concrete render or skimcoat, so the finished product would be indistinguishable from the rest of a rendered or skimcoated wall.

  • I rather like it. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by retchdog ( 1319261 )

    I think it looks neat; reminiscent (to me) of those walls with shards of heavy wine bottles stucco'ed into the top as a makeshift intrusion deterrent. Europe is full of a mix of majestic architecture and ugly-hacks-through-the-ages, reflecting the materials and skillsets available at the time.

  • Oh well, at least they can be easily removed.

  • without any glue whatsoever (Score:5, Funny)

    by jedie ( 546466 ) on Friday July 25, 2008 @06:13PM (#24343199) Homepage
    FTA: 'At first I thought it would be a complicated procedure to fit the pieces, But as it turned out, the bigger plastic pieces were compatible with the smaller ones, and the Lego held itself in place without any glue whatsoever.'

    No shit Sherlock?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by pieisgood ( 841871 )
      He meant to the wall its self, not other lego bricks.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Prien715 ( 251944 )

      Actually this is what I think he means:
      But as it turned out, the [Duplo Blocks]...were compatible with the [lego blocks]...and the [whole thing]...held itself in place without any glue whatsoever."

      I didn't think they were compatible until my younger brother started playing with duplo blocks and started playing around with them. Granted, this is when I was around 10, but without my sibling's interest I wouldn't have figured it out.

    • Just wait until the time comes for further repairs and he tries to take the "glueless" legos apart...

    • I think he meant as in a vertical plane, not that they stuck together, but that they didn't just fall forward onto the cobble stone,
  • Most AFOL's [brickwiki.org] that I know would cringe at a chaotic color scheme like that. Sure, some might argue that it's art, but I think there's an at least as strong argument that it's also friggen ugly.
  • Once again, the power of modern technology triumphs again, and building material like straw, sticks, clay bricks and yes, even gingerbread is shown to be obsolete.
  • Is this what passes for a decent news article these days? Why is this kid "scouring the city?" Is it a college project? A city request? Boredom? Is it a permanent thing? An art installation? Did cement staop working? What is with the poor sentence structure? This reads like gossip from a disinterested stoner.

  • It's like the scene has been created on the holodeck but a few holoemitters are broken

    How do you know that isn't what actually happened?

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