Parthenon in Lego
The model is not of the ruins of today, but an attempt to recreate the building in its ancient glory. I built it in an approximate scale of 1:240, the smallest I could manage without sacrificing too much detail and distort the beautiful proportions of the temple. My first attempt was a 1:120 version, but that became quite large and too expensive for me to build on my own budget, without having significantly more detail. This small design is of course a lot less detailed than the actual historic building. However, I tried my best to render what I could in this small scale, and the general structure and the proportions are quite accurately reproduced. Proportions were very important design aspects to ancient Greek architects. The integer proportions 4:6:9 appear everywhere in the real building, and to some extent I have kept that in my Lego version. The final design is still a pretty complex build with well over 1000 pieces, with lots of 1x1 rounds and 1x1 plates. ![]() The model has reasonably accurate interior detail. All the main features of the structure are there, to the extent that I could find references on the Web, and the design opens up to provide a good view of the inside. ![]() In this scale, the Athena statue in the middle of the temple (in ancient texts reported to be about 12 meters tall) is approximately the size of a standard Lego figure or "minifig". The Athena statue I placed inside the temple is of course not very accurate, but I did give her a golden shield and made a feeble attempt at a hint of a winged Nike in her right hand. ![]() The model was first designed on a computer using the software MLCad (see www.ldraw.org) and then built in real life, after I shopped around for the parts I needed. Note that my choice of colors were partly constrained by my budget and the availability of parts, so the color scheme is not entirely true to the original building. I also wanted to avoid a purely monochrome design, since that tends to be a bit boring visually. As a tribute to the computer graphics movie of the Parthenon, directed by Paul Debevec and released at Siggraph 2004, here is a page with images of a Lego version of Paul documenting the ambient light at the site of this Lego Parthenon. Lego model and web page created by Stefan Gustavson, August 2004. |