The title says it all really. If you had the money to fork out for all the bricks could you build a habitable abode from lego?
I don’t think so.
Lego, while fun and educational for the entire family, isn’t all that strong. And your normal non-Lego home, has a fair amount of stress on it from varying angles. For example, the ceiling joists keep your roof from pan caking onto your home. Not sure that Lego can handle that type of stress.
Now if you superglue, that might be another story.
I’m no expert, but it’s been my experience that Lego constructions are not entirely waterproof. So, you might not be able to completely seal off an interior space from the elements. The other issue I’d worry about would be exposure - as I recall, Legos can shrink (not to mention discolor) when left outside, although I don’t know what conditions cause that, or the timeframe. My WAG would be yes, but it wouldn’t be the best house, and it wouldn’t last very long.
ETA: Forgot to add, I doubt you could build anything like the typical shape of a wood-frame house - you’d probably need to find a form more suited to Legos. I suspect arches and domes instead of columns and beams would be the way to go, possibly with fairly thick walls.
Lego bricks would presumably not be strong enough to buid pressurized pipes, so running water would be out of the question.
Also, any surface exposed to germs would likely be susceptible to nastiness growing in the seams between bricks. Countertops, toilet bowls, etc.
Tori, Grant and Kari did a recent episode on the Mythbusters where they builded a large ball out of LEGO bricks and rolled it downhill to test a myth, the ball broke apart after only a short distance. It does not give me great assurance that a house would not also break apart if stressed, as in a strong wind.
Not only that, your property values would suffer when neighbors start building cheaper Duplo houses in your area.
I think you could build a habitable house. The biggest issues I see are in the roof/ceilings. However, if you rethink the engineering, you can use arches, columns, etc. to support it. (For example, the Egyptians supported a weak roof over Carnac by using hundreds of columns throughout a large room).
You could probably resist most weather too, as long as you’re permitted to rethink the house concept. After all, there’s nothing to prevent you from building the house 100 yards on a side with walls 40 yards thick, and a little living space inside. (You’d probably need that much to get the weight necessary to hold it down, unless you permit a non-Lego foundation). I agree with others that it would probably not be waterproof unless you permit glue, paint or caulk to help seal the cracks. If it isn’t waterproof, ice would be a big problem in keeping it together, since the expansion would tend to force pieces out. But, an unstable house that took a lot of maintenance would still be habitable, just a pain in the rear.
I’m assuming that your conditions would permit furnishings, plumbing, electricity, etc. to be non-Lego. If not, you certainly couldn’t build something up to code.
Interesting.
With all the uses Legos have been picked for…
I’m wondering why no one has tried this.
- Jack
Define “habitable”. Tarps, bamboo and open sewers are habitable to millions.
It probably has decent compression strength, but has very little strength against lateral forces (see the above mentioned mythbusters episode.)
There are some lego sculptures in the Nordstrom mall in downtown chicago and if you take a close look you’ll see the artist has drilled a bunch of holes and run metal rods through the sculpture to keep it strong. I also think there’s a lot of glue on there too.
A house would probably need lots of reinforcement like the sculptures. With enough money and effort Im sure its 100% possible to build something you could live in, but it may be impossible to meet the building codes in your area if you just use lego, metal, and glue.
Perhaps the line is, would a LEGO house be able to pass a typical First World building code? I’m guessing, the answer is, no.
They don’t seem to have a problem with fading (evident by the outdoor scultptures at Downtown Disney and Legoland Schaumberg, IL) but they aren’t structurally sound when you get into larger structures. Like others have said the big pieces use a lot of glue and are structurally supported with hidden framework.
And while they don’t fade they do get very dirty. The hanging pieces at the Mall of America legoland are grayed from dust.
With regards to the structural reinforcing, I’d be willing to bet that if your only requirement was an open space inside - i.e., it doesn’t need to look like anything - you could build a solely Lego ‘house’. For example, you could use a really big corbeled arch for your interior space - sure, it might not be cozy, but it could work. Sheer surfaces are probably out, I think you’d be looking at basically a big pile instead. Lego pyramid, perhaps?
There are fairly flat pieces that you could use for a roof without wiehginh much and needing massive columns.
This thread has got me wondering about housebrick sized legos and the possiblilties
I watched that one, and I wouldn’t use it as a basis for a decision. The ball was constructed by making a bunch of smaller cubes, (maybe ~18" cubed?) and sticking them together. But it was pretty obvious that the ball broke up along those cube edges. To many sections of flat edge against flat edge, with connections only at the top and bottom.
I don’t know about the ones at Legoland but the sculptures at Downtown Disney have various sealants applied. They’re not “naked” bricks.
That makes sense. Probably some thick acrylic with UV protection.
If we expand the definition to include minimal use of non-lego materials, I believe it’s possible. As an engineering student in college, I made some very strong (relatively) structures using string to pre-tension the buildings. I’m sure this could be scaled up - but it may not meet the spirit of the op.
They used to make oversized Lego bricks (no, not Duplo) that were nearly the size of regular building bricks. They’re very hard to find, though, and the only people who know they exist seem to be those who had them as kids.