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.

The next full TwinLUG meeting will be 1:30PM Sunday March 29th, 2009 at the Rondo Community library in St Paul, MN. The library is located at 461 N. Dale Street. Check the placard at the front desk for the meeting room assignment.

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

The February TwinLUG meeting was held once again at the Rondo Community Library in St Paul, MN. Garth has as usual posted a great summary of the meeting on his blog.

We would like to thank everyone for bringing all of their Micropolis modules. The resulting assembly was stunning in it’s size, diversity, and was a perfect showcase of the building skills of the individuals in the group. Pictures of the assembled city should be available from several sources soon.

Mark your calendars for Sunday March 8, 2009 for the Family Day at the Cathedral of St Paulwhere they will be throwing open the doors from 1:30-4:30 for a whole host of family friendly activies including tours, pipe organ demonstrations, crafts, and TwinLUG’s own LEGO Ambassador Roy Cook showing of his work in progress model of the Cathedral building. More info can be found at the Cathedral of St Paul Website or download a copy of the  flyer (PDF).