If you’re like me and covet the Lego building and town sets, but either can’t afford them or want to create your own from scratch, No Starch Press has come out with a new book that will help you do just that.
The LEGO Neighborhood Book by Brian Lyles and Jason Lyles is a combination idea book and instructional lesson that will teach you how to build the intricate features of a Lego town on your own. Use pieces that you already have, or order some Pick a Brick pieces to fill out your collection.
From the press release:
The LEGO Neighborhood Book shows readers how to create buildings with real-world details like cornices, facades, and columns. Readers give interior design a try by filling their buildings with furniture and light fixtures, and then add finishing touches—plants, traffic lights, scaffolding, park benches—to the streets of their neighborhoods.
The book walks you through designing your neighborhood including the details of the sidewalk, building color choice, building details, and step-by-step directions to build four different buildings (a corner drugstore and three different styles of apartment building) from scratch. Pick the building and detail styles that you like, and then furnish the interior. Parts lists are included, and you can visit their website for a digital version (hopefully forthcoming).
If one of the step-by-step buildings doesn’t appeal to you, the book is filled with dozens of quality photographs of other building styles, which you can recreate with some effort, or they can inspire you to invent your own. Many work from a similar base building style, only changing the facade.
While the Lego kits for these types of buildings are gorgeous and well done, this book may be all you need to inspire your particular Lego neighborhood that you can create in your own style.
What will I do with it? I thought I would pilfer my Lego brick supplies to see what I could build in the book with what I already have, but, in reality, that would tie up too many of my bricks. If I built the structures in this book, I wouldn’t want to just take them apart again right away. So I’ll need to put a bucket of bricks on my wish list.
The LEGO Neighborhood Book comes out next month and will retail for $19.95. You will want this book for your Lego book collection, and it’s also a fantastic gift for any builder on your gift list.
Note: I received this book for review purposes.
