A Lithuanian LEGO fan designer is seeking to turn one of Kaunas’ interwar modernist buildings into an official set of the popular construction toy line.
Rokas Mikšiūnas, a heritage preservation activist, has uploaded a model of the Iljinai House, an iconic 1930s building from the period when Kaunas was the temporary capital of Lithuania, to LEGO Ideas, a special website for such creations.
“Even before the Iljinai House, I was creating various models for fun,” the author told BNS. “I set myself the goal of creating something more complex, more impressive to showcase my work and Kaunas’ modernist architecture.”
The model consists of around 2,600 bricks and also has rooms with authentic period furniture and a piano.
Mikšiūnas said he could have spent about 100 hours in two years working on the model, with the biggest challenge being the angular windows with a red border and making sure that the bay window was not too big and in keeping with the proportions of the building.
The Lithuanian used only existing Lego bricks for the exceptionally shaped building, but had to pick new colours that are not available in the kit, which is allowed by the rules.
The Iljinai House project has already passed 5,000 supporters on LEGO Ideas, the halfway point to reaching the final milestone of 10,000 to be considered by the LEGO Review Board.
Mikšiūnas believes that it is a realistic target.
He predicts that in the next stage, his project will compete with around 30 models, from which two or three will be selected to become LEGO’s new sets.
Lithuania has filed a nomination case to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Paris to list Kaunas’ modernist architecture of the 1919-1939 period as a World Heritage Site.
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