Lego Master Builders

I know that many of you love building with Legos, did you know that you can become a Master Builder when you grow up? But it's not that easy.....read on and learn what it takes to become one! (By the way, the story was written by sixth-grader Lucas Miller, who also happens to be my son!

             For Christmas, my brother and I got 4,287 pieces of colored plastic. We were extremely excited. These weren’t random bits of plastic, they were part of a Lego set of London’s Tower Bridge. But that’s nothing compared to the 20,000 bricks in the giant Whale’s Tail or the 304,500 bricks used to create Neptune in an exhibit at the Sydney Aquarium.

            Millions of people around the globe play with Lego but not many can name the people behind the gigantic and beautiful plastic brick creations seen in storefronts, theme parks and museums and places. These are the works of the Lego Master Builders.  I already knew a lot about Lego in general but since I didn’t know much about Lego Master Builders I chose to make them the focus of my I-Search paper.

            I wanted to learn what Master Builders do and who they are.  I really wanted to uncover the history of the Lego Master Builder. I wanted to know who had created the position, and how the job has changed over the years. I also wanted to discover how someone could become a Master Builder and the different duties they would have before becoming a full-fledged master. Another thing I wanted to know was how many Masters there are, and who they are. But most of all I wanted to find about the creations they make, and how they are designed.

            Since Lego is extremely popular, I thought there would be loads of information on the Master Builders. But... there wasn’t. The Lego Book, by Daniel Lipkowitz, which I own, had a two-page spread but it is mostly pictures and has very little information. My dad helped me check the New York Times’ entire archives since 1851 and there was nothing on Master Builders. When I first Googled the topic, I found a June 2010 story by a WBEZ radio producer in Chicago at

www.marketplace.org about a Master Builder named Daniel Morey but it didn’t have much information. Very few  Google results contained any useful facts. Many were promoting Lego, especially the company’s “Master Builder Academy,” in which kids learn how to build with Legos.

I felt very frustrated. I almost gave up and wanted to change my topic. I asked my dad for help and he showed me how to put words in quotes in Google and how to refine my search.

            Finally, I found three good websites with stuff about my topic: zakkalife.blogspot.com (October 2011), geekmom.com (June 2011), which I only found through something on wired.com, and geekadelphia.com (March 2010). But then one site that just had Lego images, www.antalik.com, led me to another good site, www. Fbtb.net, (August 2005), after I clicked on the Neptune picture just because I wanted to see it up close.

            Zakkalife had an interview with Lego Master Builder Steve Gerling, Geekmom had an article about Gerling that also had some Master Builder history, Geekadelphia had an interview with a different Master Builder, named Pete Donner, and fbtb had an interview with Master Builder Erik Varszegi.  Most of the people who published these articles/interviews do not have any real journalistic credentials, they are mostly just Lego geeks with blogs about Lego, but considering that most of the stuff I found were just Q&As, I don’t really think credentials are necessary. They were very informative and answered most of my questions.            

            I learned from the geekmom site that the job of Master Builder was created in 1961 by Dagny Holm, who was the niece of one of Lego’s founders. Today, there are  Master Builders at the U.S. headquarters in Enfield, Connecticut, the world headquarters in Denmark, inthe Czech Republic, and in all of the Legoland theme parks (here in America, in Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom). Some of these people started out as artists, either painters or sculptors or woodworkers but some came from other backgrounds, as scientists or even clowns.

            In the Pete Donner interview, I learned that Master Builders have to start just as model gluers doing basic work and then move up to being a model builder before eventually getting promoted to Master Builder.

            In the Steve Gerling interview, which is the most up-to-date information I found, I learned that there are seven Master Builders at Lego in America but that they also use six or eight freelancers. One thing I learned in the Gerling interview and in the Varszegi interview that really surprised me is how much of their work today is done using computers.

            “We do a lot of our prototyping for our big models on software that the Lego company developed that allows us to take a virtually designed generic model and turn it into a virtual Lego model that can be used for a prototype,” Gerling says. “We can copy that layer by layer.”

            And Varszegi comments, “If we were to grow the department it would be helpful to have an art or architecture background like some of us here. Also these days, like most jobs, we are relying more and more on computer skills. We make use of 3D software like 3DStudiosMax, Maya and Poser. AutoCAD, we use that a lot and graphics programs like Photoshop. “

            One quote I really liked from Gerling showed that they don’t build the commercial sets that my brother and I might build and also about creativity. “We're not the ones who design the set that you buy in stores,” he says. “Our job is to promote the imagination.”

            I really learned a lot about Lego Master Builders and I was glad that I learned from the actual Master Builders themselves.. Even though the research part was frustrating, I think it taught me more about how to do research on a specific topic. I don’t think there is any more I need to learn about this topic but I think that whatever the next topic I need to do research on may be I will be more prepared to do the job.