Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Per Molts Anys, Arta

United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.
US Capitol Building.
Photo credits: Corbis, Encyclopaedia Brittanica



In 1990 I went with some other students to a Linguistics Conference in Washington D.C., and I saw the US Capitol Building for the first time. I like the building and what it stands for. While I was a student in Washington, DC, I visited the US Capitol a few more times. 


Little US Capitol, big US Capitol.
Lego Architect is a series with miniatures of important buildings. A while ago I saw they had the US Capitol Building. I found the building instructions on the Lego website, and I decided to try to build it using the pieces we have at home. That required a little bit of creativity, so I built my own miniature version.

Front View.
A couple of months after I finished the miniature, I thought it might be a good idea to try to do something bigger. I decided to use my miniature as the guide for the larger building. I just tried to do it twice as tall, twice as long, and twice as wide.

So, the Lego Architect version is a representation of the actual building. My miniature version is a version of the Lego Architect building. My larger version is a version of my smaller version, which is a version of the Lego miniature, which is a version of the actual building.

Back View.
I left the back wall off and four sections of the roof can be removed so people can look inside. The senate is on the left (north side) and the house and the room with the statues are on the right (south). I used my imagination in the design of the inside of the building.

The whole thing made for a good conversation with David about politics and history.

Joaquim
The senate chamber. Very
different from the real thing.






Created in sections for easy transportation.


4 comments:

  1. When I began to read this post, I didn’t know who the writer of it was. At first I thought Doral since he is interested in politics and might have visited DC in the 1990’s. As I read on, I thought Leo, since he has an extreme interest in Lego and enough Lego to start his own store. I didn’t think Doral would make such a structure, nor did I think he had any Lego left, having divested some of his Lego so that it is at Richard’s house. I decided Leo was going to be my first pick as the writer, but you were still in the running. Doral was coming in last. If I had known what language the title was in, I would have picked you first, but the clue was incomprehensible to me.

    And now to skip to the end of what could have been a whole essay from me, just on reading your post, Joaquim. There are many people in my family who are outstanding parenters. If I put them all together I could not rate them. They are for me in a group just that, outstanding parenters. All in their own way. And some who are text book parenters, meaning they are the people that the text books would point to as people with methods to be emulated. Today anyone who reads this post will be thinking about you and saying, probably in more formal ways Rebecca’s words above.

    No grandmother could ever have received a gift with more gratitude than I have today. Thank you.

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  2. Re per molts anys:

    I had the added pleasure of going to Google to find out what "per molts anys" means: for many years, or Happy Birthday I like "for many years".

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  3. Wow. This is amazing Joaquim. I bow to your skill and patience. I know how long it takes to go through a big collection of Lego and find the pieces you need for a new set. I love that you can get all the instructions on-line now. Leo has binders full of paper copies of instructions he has saved over 40 years of collecting lego. The miracle of the interweb.

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