Heritage And LEGO A Perfect Fit For Competition Winner

The winner of a LEGO building competition that combines the iconic multi-coloured bricks with some of New Zealand’s equally iconic heritage buildings has been announced.

Adam Richards of Christchurch has won first prize in the first-ever CBS Heritage Competition in this year’s Christchurch Brick Show with his model of the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Adam has won a $200 Toyworld voucher supplied by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, the sponsor of the competiton.

Runners up, Ivan and Tamsin Mackintosh, won a $50 voucher for their model of the Christchurch Public Trust office.

Competiton judges, LEGO master Centuri Chan and Rosemary Baird of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, were looking for technical skill - and in particular what LEGO afficianados refer to as NPU (Nice Piece Usage - using pieces in unusual or creative ways), and accuracy to the historical building.

The winning model ticked all the technical and creative boxes.

"We selected this as the winner because of the technical skill in recreating the vari-coloured stonework and the night sky and stars. They also recreated the snowy terrain skillfully. It’s hard to make LEGO look organic," says Centuri.

"It was very difficult to choose winners. All the entries were of a high calibre."

The judges also praised the runner-up entry, the Public Trust building, saying it was "nicely built for the scale they chose".

Exhibitors to this year’s show were offered the opportunity to enter a special competition to recreate in LEGO a place recognised on the New Zealand Heritage List Rārangi Kōrero - the national inventory managed by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga that records the country’s rich and diverse place-based heritage.

Seven LEGO masters took up the challenge building models that included the Church of the Good Shepherd, Lyttelton Gaol, Kotahitanga Church, Cape Egmont Lighthouse, the Fire Watchtower, the Boer War Memorial in Invercargill and the Christchurch Public Trust Office.

A further six models were also put forward to display as non-entry exhibition models.

According to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Senior Outreach Advisor, Rosemary Baird, the inspiration for the competition was a model of the Lyttelton Timeball created by Christchurch LEGO master Mark Dowers, which featured in the 2023 Brick Show.

"The Timeball model highlighted the close synergy between heritage buildings and LEGO," she says.

"We thought it would be cool to see what interest there might be in combining the two in a competition - and this year’s incredible entries were the result."

In addition to the prizes, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga compiled some information for each of the listed places that featured in the competition.

"It was so interesting researching properties from our list that I was unfamiliar with. I was fascinated to learn about the history of the Cape Egmont Lighthouse, for example, which was reconstructed from a previous lighthouse and became implicated in the New Zealand government’s invasion of Parihaka," she says.

"The impressive Invercargill Boer War memorial illustrates a time when many New Zealanders identified so closely with ‘Mother Britain’. These places are not just buildings - their history really highlights how our society has changed over the years."

Christchurch Brick Show organiser Lisa Moon was delighted with all of the exhibits at this year’s show - and was particularly impressed with the heritage entries.

"The entries in the CBS Heritage Competition are amazing, and have generated a lot of positive interest from visitors to the Brick Show, as well as among many building experts who have shown interest in giving it a go next year," says Lisa.

The Christchurch Brick Show - New Zealand’s largest LEGO fan event - involved 300 exhibitors this year and drew over 15,000 visitors.

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