National Library displays Singapore's landmarks in Lego

(From left) Brick artists Eugene Tan, Xylvie Wong, National Heritage Board's Assistant Chief Executive (Policy & Community) Alvin Tan and Preservation of Sites and Monuments division Assistant Manager Ian Lee looking at the Lego model of Sultan Mosque. ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

The National Heritage Board worked with three artists from My Little Brick Shop who have architecture and design expertise to plan and build the replicas of eight national monuments.
PHOTO: NATIONAL HERITAGE BOARD
A pair of snakes represent the dragons and a geared wheel represents the central sun on one of Thian Hock Keng’s Temple’s rooftop. ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

SINGAPORE - Eight miniature national monuments built using more than 110,000 Lego bricks are on display at the basement of the National Library Building.

The historical landmarks are the Central Fire Station, former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, Jurong Town Hall, the former Nanyang University Library, the National Museum of Singapore, Sultan Mosque, Thian Hock Keng Temple and St Andrew's Cathedral, which is the tallest model standing at 1.1m.

The Building History: Monuments In Bricks And Blocks travelling exhibition was initiated by the National Heritage Board (NHB), which worked with three artists from My Little Brick Shop who have architecture and design expertise to plan and build the replicas.

The exhibition aims to educate people about the places' significance, history, stories and architectural diversity.

Mr Alvin Tan, the NHB's assistant chief in charge of policy and community, said: "Each of these monuments played an important role in Singapore's history.

"We hope that when visitors look at the replicas, they like them so much that they decide to visit the actual monuments."

The project started in October last year and took more than seven months to complete. Before building the models, drones were flown over the various buildings to provide an aerial view of the monuments.

Mr Eugene Tan places an old Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) train model onto the tracks of the old Tanjong Pagar Railway Station replica. ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

The three artists - Xylvie Wong, 34, Eugene Tan, 41, and Andy Goh, 35 - also spent time observing how the buildings were constructed, before assembling together each Lego piece according to the building's colours and intricacies.

Brick artists Xylvie Wong, Eugene Tan and Andy Goh assemble the 1.4m-long National Museum model. ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

The public can catch the free exhibition from June 7 to 30, from 10am to 9pm daily, except on public holidays.

Visitors stand to win attractive prizes by guessing the number of Lego blocks used to construct the Sultan Mosque - the largest model displayed, weighing more than 40kg - by uploading a photo of the model on social media with the hashtags #BuildingHistorySG and #librarysg with their answers.

Three participants with the closest guesses will win Lego models, and the next 10 participants will get a children's book on national monuments.

The travelling exhibition will make its way to Marine Parade Public Library in July, followed by Jurong Regional Library, Tampines Regional Library, Ang Mo Kio Public Library and Sengkang Public Library in subsequent months. The final exhibition will be from Dec 1 to 30 at Choa Chu Kang Public Library.

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