One of Britain’s best Lego builders has said he spends more than £100 each month on his massive collection and uses his free time building 50,000-piece models.
Simon Pickard, 38, has five purpose-built sheds in his garden to hold the estimated one million Lego bricks he uses to create ambitious designs, including a replica of Monaco’s Grand Prix circuit.
The father-of-five from Wellington, Somerset, spends hours a day ‘bricking’, or building, and says he will dish out than £100 on each trip to Cardiff’s Lego store.
Simon Pickard, 38, has five purpose-built sheds in his garden to hold the estimated one million Lego bricks he uses to create ambitious designs, including the creation of an Iron Age fortress above
But it doesn’t go to waste – Pickard has built 50,000-piece models that can be up to 25 square feet and up to 3.5ft tall.
To help pay the bills, Pickard rents out his models and writes about Legos for a magazine.
‘Lego’s about what you put into it,’ Pickard told the Sunday People. ‘I played a lot of games with Lego when I was younger. As I’ve grown older it has become much more of a creative medium for me.’
Pickard is showing off his newest and most complex model, the Monaco F1 Fairmont Hairpin, at Bricklive, Birmingham’s Lego convention at the city’s NEC next weekend.
The convention features a creator zone, gaming areas, and several displays from builders from around the world.
The four-day event is the United Kingdom’s largest celebration of Lego.
For his new model showing at the event, Pickard said that he’s developed a way to create curved roads in his models, something that has ‘taken a long time to devise’.
It’s well known among the fan-build community that you can build roads using bricks on their sides but obviously that’s all very rigid because Lego is rectangular,’ he told the Sunday People.
Fellow adult Lego enthusiast, or Afol, Jessica Farrell (pictured above), is also showing off her creative designs at Bricklive this year
Of her 30 works, she’s most proud of a 57,992-brick model of Her Majesty’s Theatre (pictured above). The project took 11 months to build
‘I managed to develop a way of creating the same effect but going in a curve,’ he added. ‘With my latest model, the curve goes uphill.’
Simon says one challenge he’s had to overcome is paralysis in his left wrist. He said that he’s had to get used to incorporating it into his building.
Pickard said that his wife of 13 years, Sophie, and their sons, Jeremiah, 11, Isaac, nine, Malachi, six, Ezekiel, four, and Zechariah, three, are also Lego fans.
He joked that if his wife knew how much he spent on the Legos, however, he’d have to build himself his own doghouse.
‘I put a lot of time into Lego,’ Pickard said. ‘I don’t think I should actually work out how much because I might get into trouble with my wife.’
Pickard is also part of Brick to the Past, a group of adult Lego fans who create historical-themed designs.
Among those he’s taken part in building are London 1875: The Capital Of An Empire and The Wall – Rome’s Northern Frontier.
The finished product was built by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his company’s main office, as his show The Phantom of the Opera is running at the West End theatre
Farrell (pictured above with the Her Majesty’s Theatre replica), a 48-year-old mother, co-builds large projects with her 14-year-old son Faolan
He said that thanks to The Lego Movie, released in 2014, the toy bricks have become even more mainstream than they previously were.
Fellow adult Lego enthusiast, or Afol, Jessica Farrell, is also showing off her designs at Bricklive this year.
The 48-year-old mother, co-builds with her 14-year-old son Faolan andhas taken her passion to Denmark and Portugal, and she will also be on display at Bricklive.
Of her 30 works, she’s most proud of a 57,992-brick model of Her Majesty’s Theatre. The project took 11 months to build.
The finished product was built by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his company’s main office, as his show The Phantom of the Opera is running at the West End theatre.
Earlier this year, Lego unveiled its largest set to ever be sold – an updated Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon Lego ship.
The finished product holds 7,541 pieces with a staggering £600 price tag. It is also the single most expensive set the company has ever sold.
The ship is incredibly detailed too. It comes with swappable deflector dishes that match with the original trilogy and Force Awakens variants of the ship.