Slashdot Mirror


Ancient Italian Walls Repaired With Lego Bricks

Ubuntukitten writes "When some walls in Bocchignano near Roma started to erode, the perfect solution was found in Lego bricks (although some look suspiciously like Duplo bricks to me). FTA: 'At first I thought it would be a complicated procedure to fit the pieces, But as it turned out, the bigger plastic pieces were compatible with the smaller ones, and the Lego held itself in place without any glue whatsoever.' I like the effect. It's like the scene has been created on the holodeck but a few holoemitters are broken ..."

62 comments

  1. Call me old-fashioned by hahafaha · · Score: 3, Informative

    Am I the only one who thinks this is rather appalling? I mean, these are beautiful, ancient relics, now completely defaced.

    1. Re:Call me old-fashioned by JCSoRocks · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, it looks like crap. I love legos, but I also love architecture and ye olde buildings.... cheesy plastic bricks + old buildings = garbage.

      --
      You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
    2. Re:Call me old-fashioned by TornCityVenz · · Score: 1

      it's more visually interesting than a bad stucco patch though.

      --
      I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
    3. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      its a wall. just about every wall in all of europe is some kind of ancient relic.

    4. Re:Call me old-fashioned by PFI_Optix · · Score: 2

      But...it's ART! How dare you question anything deemed art? Forgive me. I am just tired of every weird or eccentric stunt done by a self-proclaimed "artist" getting major attention.

      --
      120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
    5. Re:Call me old-fashioned by strelitsa · · Score: 1

      I glowed with self-righteous self-satisfaction when Steven Spielberg digitally replaced the guns in the hands of the FBI agents in ET - The Extra-Terrestrial with walkie talkies.

      .

      Now all we've left to do is edit all smoking out of movies and make it look like Greedo shot first. Then the world will be perfect.

      .

      (This was sarcasm. Cold ironic sarcasm.)

      --
      No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
    6. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      If this were an "official fix", then yes I'd agree with you.
       
      But it's just some jackass artist trying to get noticed. And he got himself in the Telegraph. Mission Accomplished.
       
      It even says in the article that they aren't glued in and are utterly temporary. Relax.

    7. Re:Call me old-fashioned by DavidYaw · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Am I the only one who thinks this is rather appalling? I mean, these are beautiful, ancient relics, now completely defaced.

      Better than a pile of rubble.

    8. Re:Call me old-fashioned by hedwards · · Score: 1

      It seems more like a publicity stunt or possibly awareness effort than anything official. Besides, there's no way that legos or duplos have the necessary characteristics for an official fix.

    9. Re:Call me old-fashioned by gbulmash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If they could have tried to match the color a little bit, it might not be so bad. But with the day-glo Lego colors, it looks like grafitti or vandalism rather than repair.

    10. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Nasajin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Am I the only one who thinks this is rather appalling? I mean, these are beautiful, ancient relics, now completely defaced.

      Exactly! Lego should never be mixed with Duplo. It's a travesty!

    11. Re:Call me old-fashioned by philspear · · Score: 1

      It did say it was temporary. Beautiful ancient relics is also disputable. TFA doesn't say that, these aren't ancient roman walls crumbling. Actually kind of looks like walls about a hundred years old in alleys that no one gives a crap about.

      And given that apperantly every fucking teen in Europe must at some point spray paint his or her name across some public fixture, putting legos next to a crumbling wall is not bad.

    12. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

      Go to Italy. There are tons of ruins and ancient walls Bocchignano being fairly minor. When you goto important places like rome and venice you'll notice that most of it is graffitied. Some wall being legoed is the least of italy's problems when the Colosseum is being defaced regularly.

    13. Re:Call me old-fashioned by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 1

      They're crumbling walls and the Lego pieces are temoprary. What's the problem? Not every old wall is an ancient relic... some are just old walls.

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
    14. Re:Call me old-fashioned by flyingsquid · · Score: 3, Funny
      No, it looks like crap.

      I agree COMPLETELY. The beautiful aesthetics of those LEGOs, ruined by those hideous stones.

    15. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's just a wall and the article never says anything about the antiquity of the wall. Nor do they look terribly beautiful. Did you look at the pictures? They look just like all the other stone walls found everywhere else.
       
      Anyways, it's just a publicity stunt by some artist. I don't think the bricks are going to stay there long.

    16. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Relax, they aren't part of the wall. They're only leaning against it. The story is a hoax.

    17. Re:Call me old-fashioned by JoshJ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You say that like graffiti isn't commonplace in America. I mean, really.

    18. Re:Call me old-fashioned by GleeBot · · Score: 1

      This isn't actually related to what this guy did, but real restorations often are purposefully "ugly" so that you can tell the difference between the original material, and the restoration. This is to preserve the historical record.

    19. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is telegraph.co.uk. YHBT.

    20. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Max+Threshold · · Score: 1

      You must be American. In Europe, people actually live and work in those ancient relics.

    21. Re:Call me old-fashioned by philspear · · Score: 1

      It is definitely not AS common.

    22. Re:Call me old-fashioned by hazem · · Score: 1

      It is ghastly looking but the key is that they appear to be filling the hole and keeping the other stones from falling out of place. And more importantly, it's completely undo-able, which is an important value in any kind of preservation/restoration work dealing with relics.

      With this ugly patch, its obvious what is old and new and it can be undone by just plucking them out.

      Hopefully it's just a stop-gap with more significant repairs to follow that will be more aesthetically pleasing.

    23. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amerifag?Seriously, in europe we have literally millions of old buildings like these.

      Temporarily decorating some of them with art like this is our perogative.

      (Where "old" means at least a thousand years older than your country, pleb.)

    24. Re:Call me old-fashioned by MagdJTK · · Score: 1

      Personally I like it. It's something a bit interesting to look at and it's not like it's permanent.

      I think people from the Americas need to realise that we're surrounded by this kind of thing here in Europe. I mean my uni accommodation in my first year was 14th or 15th century (we never found out which in the end), so was at least three hundred years older than the US itself.

    25. Re:Call me old-fashioned by flnca · · Score: 2, Funny

      People build houses in Europe too! :-D

    26. Re:Call me old-fashioned by flnca · · Score: 1

      FYI, Duplo is manufactured by Lego as well. :-D Duplo are the bricks for younger children, while Lego are for older ones.

    27. Re:Call me old-fashioned by flnca · · Score: 1

      Not all Europeans.

    28. Re:Call me old-fashioned by flnca · · Score: 1

      I think it's beautiful! :-)

    29. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Invidious · · Score: 1

      It's not like they couldn't be easily removed; the article states that they're not even glued in.

      Besides, the Beautiful Ancient Relic is just yesteryear's wall.

    30. Re:Call me old-fashioned by nacturation · · Score: 1

      No, it looks like crap. I love legos [...]

      Please - learn how to spell. loose != lose.

      Speaking of your sig, it's LEGO, not legos. You can have a LEGO set or box, a single LEGO brick, or just a whole mess of LEGO. The capitalization ultimately doesn't matter and you can call it Lego or lego if you like. However, calling it "legos" is just wrong. That's about as ridiculous as "I love reading slashdots".
       

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    31. Re:Call me old-fashioned by JCSoRocks · · Score: 1

      You are right. I've been suckered into using the vernacular. Although I must say... it seems that in the same way that the British add the letter "r" onto the end of some words Americans do the same with "s".

      --
      You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
    32. Re:Call me old-fashioned by TheCastro · · Score: 1

      Lego and Duplo are owned by the same people, remember we all started with the Duplo train set, then we were all too poor to afford the electric powered Lego train set.

    33. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Keybase · · Score: 1

      Originally the bigger blocks were called LEGO as well. (About 30 years ago)

      --
      Do what is right. You will please some and astonish the rest. --Mark Twain
    34. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Nasajin · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hahaha! Originally the bigger blocks were called 'stones', and that's what the building was made out of.

    35. Re:Call me old-fashioned by rjk94 · · Score: 1

      Are you telling me every teenager in Europe spray paints?

      I'm morbidly offended; I use a paint roller.

      --
      Don't try to out-weird me, three eyes. I get weirder things than you in my breakfast cereal. - Zaphod Beeblebrox
    36. Re:Call me old-fashioned by Lobster+Quadrille · · Score: 1

      I called them 'Big LEGOs'...

      And the fact that the guy is surprised that they are compatible with the little ones proves that he didn't have a real childhood.

      Everybody knows that.

      --
      "The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
  2. What kind of dumbass wrote the summary? by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 1

    although some look suspiciously like Duplo bricks to me.

    Guess who makes Duplo bricks

    --
    We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
    1. Re:What kind of dumbass wrote the summary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IIRC my childhood correctly, it was perfectly possible to fit lego bricks onto duplo. Some other slashdotter can probably confirm or deny this soon.

    2. Re:What kind of dumbass wrote the summary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From TFA:

      "At first I thought it would be a complicated procedure to fit the pieces," he said.

      "But as it turned out, the bigger plastic pieces were compatible with the smaller ones, and the Lego held itself in place without any glue whatsoever."

      Bigger = Duplo; Smaller = (traditional) Lego. They're all Legos of a sort. And the wiki page on Duplo has a picture of a lego fitting onto duplos.

  3. IMHO by Sobieski · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I find this almost beautiful, more captivating than the original wall. Though if it wasn't there to support the wall, I wouldn't like it.

    Then it would just be like grafitti, art is relative... changing someone elses property's appearence is not acceptable.

    --
    Particles, stuff that matters.
    1. Re:IMHO by hurfy · · Score: 1

      Any artists want to come work on my basement foundation?

      Doubt labor is a whole less but i bet the legos cost a far bit more than new mortar :(

    2. Re:IMHO by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Though if it wasn't there to support the wall, I wouldn't like it.

      Are we supposed to take seriously the artist's opinon on whether this is a structural repair? I doubt that the bricks provide anything more than color.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  4. My $0.02 by NoobixCube · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While I don't like the look of mixing the Lego and Duplo with the old architecture, it is an interesting idea. A more structurally sound version of Lego could, one day, be the standard tool for patching damaged walls. If the Lego were designed to be rough on the sides, it might hold concrete render or skimcoat, so the finished product would be indistinguishable from the rest of a rendered or skimcoated wall.

    --
    Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
  5. I rather like it. by retchdog · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think it looks neat; reminiscent (to me) of those walls with shards of heavy wine bottles stucco'ed into the top as a makeshift intrusion deterrent. Europe is full of a mix of majestic architecture and ugly-hacks-through-the-ages, reflecting the materials and skillsets available at the time.

    --
    "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
  6. A manchild marking his territory. Squirt. by Trespass · · Score: 1

    Oh well, at least they can be easily removed.

  7. without any glue whatsoever by jedie · · Score: 4, Funny
    FTA: 'At first I thought it would be a complicated procedure to fit the pieces, But as it turned out, the bigger plastic pieces were compatible with the smaller ones, and the Lego held itself in place without any glue whatsoever.'

    No shit Sherlock?

    --
    "The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
    http://slashdot.jp
    1. Re:without any glue whatsoever by pieisgood · · Score: 3, Informative

      He meant to the wall its self, not other lego bricks.

      --
      Eat sleep die
    2. Re:without any glue whatsoever by Prien715 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually this is what I think he means:
      But as it turned out, the [Duplo Blocks]...were compatible with the [lego blocks]...and the [whole thing]...held itself in place without any glue whatsoever."

      I didn't think they were compatible until my younger brother started playing with duplo blocks and started playing around with them. Granted, this is when I was around 10, but without my sibling's interest I wouldn't have figured it out.

      --
      -- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
    3. Re:without any glue whatsoever by TheCastro · · Score: 1

      I think he meant as in a vertical plane, not that they stuck together, but that they didn't just fall forward onto the cobble stone,

    4. Re:without any glue whatsoever by TheCastro · · Score: 1

      wow, my comment is redundant

  8. Dunno, it still seems like grafitti to me by Moraelin · · Score: 2, Insightful
    1. Hmm, I dunno, I would think it depends more on whether the owner agreed to that kind of modification to their property. If the owners (or the city hall in the case of city property) actually agreed to have their walls repaired with Lego, or maybe in a sort of "doesn't matter with what" kinda contract, then it's ok. If not, it's still defacing someone else's property.

    I mean, think of it this way: let's say your house showed some signs of water damage, or maybe (minor) cracks after an earthquake. And I come and glue a brightly coloured poster on top of it. Maybe even a waterproof poster to prevent more water getting there. Fine. But I'm guessing most people would still have a fit about suddenly discovering a bright poster on their property's wall.

    2. Additionally, I have to wonder exactly how much _are_ they supporting the wall there. I.e., if it even has that excuse.

    That looks like a thick wall of rock and brick. Especially the rock part is actually pretty damn heavy. And usually pretty tough too. Plastic toy bricks, not so much.

    If the rest of the wall wasn't holding them in place already, i.e., if the weight of that wall was actually resting on those toy bricks, I'm guessing they'd get crushed instantly.

    TFA says they're not even fixed there. Oh, and get this, he tried to fix them there with some _glue_, but it didn't stick to the dusty rock. Maybe someone should tell him about cement. You'd think the rest of the wall would be a clue.

    So basically it doesn't look to me like it's even actually "repairing" the wall. It's just a bunch of toy bricks that occupy some available space there, but not much more.

    I.e., on the whole it helps the wall just about as much as gluing a poster over the hole would.

    3. Hmm, dunno, I have to agree with another poster there. I found the original wall much better, in that photo.

    You have to remember that those walls are likely there for historical and cultural value. You know, so people can go and look at an example of roman or medieval architecture.

    If they just wanted something brightly coloured instead, they could have demolished those old walls and built a McDonald's there.

    Even if I might appreciate a Duplo brick construction on its own, and the wall on its own, it's the combination that bothers me.

    It's like going to a museum and putting a clown nose, clown shoes and a pink tutu on a suit of beautiful Maximilian armour. The combination actually defaces and diminishes the original.

    I don't know, there's something about it that, well, seems to serve no other purpose than to visually scream "look! there's a hole here! they didn't repair it!" Much like writing "WASH ME" with the finger on a dusty car.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:Dunno, it still seems like grafitti to me by Annymouse+Cowherd · · Score: 1

      These are walls, not pieces of art...

    2. Re:Dunno, it still seems like grafitti to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they just wanted something brightly coloured instead, they could have demolished those old walls and built a McDonald's there.

      No they couldn't because in Rome McDonalds aren't allowed to look like they where buildt by ToysRus.

      Generelly there will only be a rather small golden sign with McDonalds written in their normal logo font.

  9. It looks like it was done by a child by mark-t · · Score: 1

    Most AFOL's that I know would cringe at a chaotic color scheme like that. Sure, some might argue that it's art, but I think there's an at least as strong argument that it's also friggen ugly.

  10. needs paint. by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 1

    what can I say ... it needs paint.

    1. Re:needs paint. by rjk94 · · Score: 1

      No, paint's no good. What you want is GIMP, or Photoshop.

      --
      Don't try to out-weird me, three eyes. I get weirder things than you in my breakfast cereal. - Zaphod Beeblebrox
  11. I don't know... by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 1

    temporary? but .. those bricks look SOOOO load bearing.

  12. The real surprise comes later by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just wait until the time comes for further repairs and he tries to take the "glueless" legos apart...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  13. Modern technology triumphs! by Puffy+Director+Pants · · Score: 2, Funny

    Once again, the power of modern technology triumphs again, and building material like straw, sticks, clay bricks and yes, even gingerbread is shown to be obsolete.

  14. WTF is wrong with the Telegraph? by Joe+Snipe · · Score: 1

    Is this what passes for a decent news article these days? Why is this kid "scouring the city?" Is it a college project? A city request? Boredom? Is it a permanent thing? An art installation? Did cement staop working? What is with the poor sentence structure? This reads like gossip from a disinterested stoner.

    --
    Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
  15. O rly? by Fortunato_NC · · Score: 1

    It's like the scene has been created on the holodeck but a few holoemitters are broken

    How do you know that isn't what actually happened?

    --
    Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com