Collaborative Displays to Watch

Friday setup of Mocs and Displays from 2009's Brickfair.

This year's brickfair will be rife with collaborative displays. Collaborative displays have been relatively light in previous years, but a number of interesting and exciting projects appears to be brewing within the community.

First up, building on the popularity of the Post-Apoc Meme, is the requisite Apocalego display. Robbyem's excellent Washington Monument (seen in photo at right) will be returning. Around it will spring up a new type of apocalyptic landscape: a placid and recovering walled town in the ruins of Washington, DC. This new take on a very violent theme might prove to be a very interesting and a rebirth for what some consider a one-trick-pony.

Next on the list of collaborative displays are a two-fer. Space. The word wrests the groins and passions of a thousand AFOLs. OK, maybe not. But it is a great exclamation. There's rumblings from the Space. coordinator that space(.) has been reserved for the ever-popular moonbase. Moonbase participation has been relatively light in past years, but has yielded some stellar MOCs, including Moonbase versions of Cafe Corner and Market Street.

Finally, and most excitingly is a new project that Magnus Lauglo has been brewing and piloting this past year, after the Brickfair 2009 "brick-built landscapes" roundtable session. Magnus has worked out an interesting standard for constructing large modular landscapes for displaying massive military battles (see photo at right of Magnus' setup at 2010's Marine Corp Family Day). The local AFOL has been bringing together a few builders from varying ends of the hobby, and promises to present a fun, impressive and ever-changing display.

These new projects, combined with the standard town layouts presented by Pennlug and Wamaltc, it looks like Brickfair will have a slew of great community builds.

(Photos above by myself, Brickapolis™ and Magnus Lauglo)

Organized Chaos and Chaos Organized

A diesel locomotive rolls past a 19th century plantation on Pennlug's 2009 Brickfair layout.
Pennlug's 2010 layout plan is viewable in Cale Leiphart's Flickr stream.

I'm not going to try to hide the fact that I'm a town builder. Cityscapes and busy streets catch my fancy, so much of the coverage of Brickfair that I provide will center around this particular theme. And Brickfair this year promises to offer up some new and interesting town creations. First, Pennlug will be showing off more of their modular street standards, seen en force at Brickmagic earlier this summer. The standard features brick-built roads, integrated trolley lines and simple yet effective track ballasting. For those of you who just had your eyes glaze over, I apologize. I assure you, it's exciting.

Where Pennlug will be offering structure and minute planning, Wamaltc will offer up a good chunk of on-the-fly organization. This year's layout plan, designed by Tony Perez, offers a good deal of open space to place MOCs, large and small, for optimal public viewing. Wamaltc's layout at Brickfair becomes an amalgam of both club members and local AFOLs, with a healthy smattering of 'Fair participants and attendees lending to the layout to create an exciting hybrid city.

All of this is a long means of saying that, as we wade into Brickfair, expect a good deal of town coverage here in the pages of Brick Notes, including MOC highlights and overall reviews of the layout offerings.

NB: I've also received confirmation from the organizers that, yes, wifi will be available in the conference facility as part of Brickfair's rental agreement with Dulles Expo Center, so expect a healthy smattering of coverage of the event throughout the weekend and a good deal of "on-the-fly" Flickr uploads to my photostream.

10 Days to Brickfair!

Details of Sandy Cash's brilliant Brickistan model from 2009's Brickfair. Expect more excellence from Sandy this year. Edit: See Comments.

Brickfair is only a week and a handful of days away. I'm hoping to be able to liveblog a bit of the event at this site, highlighting some of the best creations and insightful breakout sessions for those that can't make it to Northern Virginia for the four days of Lego craziness and fun.

There's a rumor that Wifi will be available in the conference facility itself. If so, I should be updating a lot. If not, I'll try to do roundups and highlight posts in the evening from the hotel.

Regardless, keep coming back as we gear up for the 'Fair here in the Mid-Atlantic!