Lego Goes Urban - Streetcar

Well you knew it had to happen sooner or later on this blog. And since there are no petition drives in the land of Lego, our pretend-city is getting a streetcar!


Our old friend Akos Kostyan in Hungary built this on special request. BKV, or "Budapest Transport Limited" company wanted a LEGO model of their new streetcar (which they call a "tram"). They actually approached LEGO Hungary to have one built but LH turned down the offer. Akos told BKV it would be impossibe to model this tram in LEGO bricks but decided to give it a try. "I decided to concentrate on the shape, so I used non-transparent "windows". A lot of thinking went into the pantograph design but the biggest challenge was building the drivers cabin. I still have to figure out a coupling system for the tram, right now the cars are not connected, so the tram can only be used as a static model. It has two 9V train motors and the cars are on wheels, so otherwise the tram could probably run on train tracks without problems."

Here's the real thing he modelled it after. Excellent work Akos! Too bad he's so far across the pond, or I'd pack up my Legos and a few brewskies and stop by to play.

Crappy Pics While Walking

Look down and you may see this.

Bottle and bird footprints:

 

..and look up and see ugly icicles!

 

or straight ahead, a weed tree.

 

Infrastructure Era to Follow Icon Decade

 

Has Zaha's ship run aground? Is iconic starchitecture in its death throes? Will it be replaced with the age of infrastructure?

By Blair Kamin |Tribune critic

The age of the architectural icon—that extravagant, exuberant, "wow"-inducing building on a pedestal—is dead, or more precisely, in its death throes. And what will replace it? President Barack Obama, who once dreamed of being an architect, had something to say about that Tuesday in his inaugural address: the age of infrastructure.

...The icon age was born in 1997 with the smash opening of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The titanium-clad museum, with its dazzling collage of shapes, spawned a new "build it, and they will come" mentality: Hire a star architect, or "starchitect," give him or her free aesthetic rein, and watch the tourists or the buyers arrive.

...And yet, icons divorced from infrastructure are nothing more than empty set pieces, objects divorced from the fabric of everyday life.

..Even as McMansions swelled the average size of the American single-family home, the nation's commitment to the public realm was shrinking. That was evident not only in New Orleans' flooded lower 9th Ward, but also in crumbling roads and bridges, as well as schools...

...the real issues transcend style. They are about whether the new infrastructure will help usher in a new set of urban growth patterns—dense neighborhoods where you can walk or bike to the corner store to buy a carton of milk—or whether new roads and bridges will simply reinforce suburban sprawl.

...the Appropriations Committee version of the stimulus bill shrinks ... rail and transit spending while leaving highway and bridge funding...

... Icon architecture is no longer the issue du jour. It's sustainability—and survival.

See also, the End of the Bilbao Decade.

Random OTR Photo

From yesterday, foreground, McMicken St Community Garden. Tower at HUB center.