It was a proud day for us on Sunday of Brickworld 2009 when the display area opened and sitting right next to the first ever Micropolis Collaborative Display at Brickworld was the award for “Best Group Layout”!

The display would have been nothing if not for the great work done by everyone who contributed a module to the display:

• Tom Anderson
• Max Braun
• Roy Cook
• Garth Danielson
• Gary Dokulil
• Christopher Doyle
• Alice Leber-Cook
• Matt Holland
• Bill Hutchinson
• Bryan Kasprzyk
• Tim Goddard (Rogue Bantha)
• Lonn Moe
• Joe Meno
• Nathan Stohlmann
• Christopher Van Allen
• David Van Allen

We would like to thank all of the blogs that posted links to the Bad Day contest and especially all of the posts from MicroBricks leading up to the convention.

We would also like to thank everyone who stopped by the display all through Brickworld and talked to us about the project. Watching people see the display the first time and start to notice all of the details was a privilege in itself, but being able to talk to some of you about the project and how it was put together was reward enough for putting it together.

We plan to be back next year with a bigger and better display and hope that anyone who was inspired by this year’s display will bring their own modules to contribute!

TwinLUG is bringing Micropolis to BrickWorld in a big way with a collaborative build that is likely to be the largest Micropolis assembly yet. Be sure to look for it in the Event Hall, and it’s not too late to bring your own module to add to the display!

If you are planning on bringing a module please be sure to carefully read through the specifications to ensure that it will fit with the rest of the modules in the build. If you need inspiration, be sure to have a look at the results of the Bad Day In Micropolis Contest that was hosted by our friend Chris at ReasonablyClever.com or any of the images on Flickr tagged with “Micropolis”.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone next week in Chicago!

The next full TwinLUG meeting will be 1:30PM Sunday June 14th, 2009 at the Rondo Community library in St Paul, MN. The library is located at 461 N. Dale Street. Please check the board at the desk to find out which meeting rooms we will be in this time.

This month is likely to be all about BrickWorld preparation and should have some interesting stuff on display.

TwinLUG member and LEGO Ambassador Roy Cook has completed his replicas of the Cathedral of St Paul and Minnesota State Capital buildings and the will both soon be on public display for everyone to appreciate them. 200 hours of work assembling approximately 120,000 LEGO bricks is a fairly epic feat for even the more jaded members of the LEGO community so be sure to take a chance to have a look at the results yourself.

Take a look at the official press release or plan for on the following public viewing dates:

• Cathedral of Saint Paul model
  May 17 – June 7
  Cathedral of Saint Paul, Ryan Room (lower level)
  Hours: The Cathedral is open seven days a week for visitors, guests, and parishioners.
  Sunday-Friday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• State Capitol model
  May 26 – June 7
  Minnesota State Capitol
  Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday 1 to 4 p.m.
• Both models together
  • June 8 – July 1
    Minnesota History Center
  • July 11
    Mall of America (near LEGO® Land)
  • Aug. 27 – Sept. 7
    Minnesota State Fair Education Building

Our good friend Chris Doyle at Reasonably Clever has partnered with us to do a contest with some excellent prizes for people who build their own fantastic Micropolis Modules! TwinLUG members Roy Cook and Max Braun are even two of the four judges, along with Chris and special guest judge Mariann Asanuma of ModelBuildingSecrets.com.

Be sure to brush up on the official Micropolis spec and then head over to the contest page for full details and enter your module!

The next full TwinLUG meeting will be 1:30PM Sunday April 19th, 2009 at the Rondo Community library in St Paul, MN. The library is located at 461 N. Dale Street. We should be in Rooms A&B behind the check out desk but check the placard at the front desk if you can’t find us.

There is currently nothing on the official agenda but please join us for fun conversation with fellow LEGO enthusiasts!

Another month and another TwinLUG meeting, though somewhat later in the month than we usually have it. This month two new people dropped in. A big hello to both Jeremy and Dean! Hopefully we didn’t scare you off.

Garth has his usual summary up on his blog.

For better or worse this was a fairly quiet meeting. Several new Micropolis modules made appearances including a Drive-In Theater by Matt and and a nice little urban theater and construction site from Jeremy. I showed off the possibilities of the proposed bluff spec for the Micropolis modules.

There were a few business items of note:

• Request for ideas for a good item or items to put up for the Esther Walner Memorial Charity Auction at BrickWorld. It’s good to see her passing honored by the larger AFoL community.
• Also related to BrickWorld, TwinLUG in past years has brought collaborative displays spelling out various words (“LEGO” and “TwinLUG” that I am aware of) and with the new Micropolis collaborative display scheduled for this year there was discussion about what to do. Several ideas were bandied about and we hope everyone enjoys what we come up with.
• Speaking of Micropolis, keep an eye out on Chris Doyle’s Reasonably Clever site this week for a related announcement. We’re all pretty excited and the timing should be good for people planning on going to BrickWorld.

We would like to thank everyone attending the meetings and look forward to the next.

Roy T Cook, TwinLUG member and LEGO Ambassador, was interviewed recently by the Pioneer Press newspaper about two large architectural models he is building for the city of St. Paul. The video part of the interview can be found on the Pioneer Press website.

The print article in the paper should appear soon (likely tomorrow – Saturday March 7)

[Updated to put a direct link to the video]

TwinLUG member and LEGO Ambassador Roy T. Cook wrote this essay on the aesthetics of LEGO building . Although originally written at the request of Joe Meno for the magazine BrickJournal it now looks like it will not be published there so Roy thought he share it on our site. Enjoy!

LEGO As Art (PDF)

Here are a couple photos from when we assembled most of the entire city so far.  Pretty sure there were at least a couple modules missing, and I know more are under construction.