At the beginning of 2014, construction of a new building began in the central parts of Billund, Denmark. If the name of that town sounds familiar, it may be because it is the home of LEGO. It’s where the company’s first workshop was established about 90 years ago and where its headquarters is still located. About three and a half years after the first bricks were put in place (yes, the foundation actually contains LEGO-shaped bricks), the building was complete.

It was officially opened on the 28th of September 2017 and is known simply as LEGO House. According to the man himself, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, his vision with the house was to create “the ultimate LEGO experience which truly unfolds the endless possibilities there are with our bricks and our LEGO system of play and have all these experiences in one house, the home of the brick.”

So what does all this have to do with yours truly you may ask? We’ll get to that shortly so hang in there. LEGO House is a pretty stunning building even if you don’t share the love of those little plastic bricks that all of us here at BrickNerd do. It is award-winning in its design and the attention to detail is pretty mind-blowing. Pretty much everything in connection to the building, both inside and out, is based on the dimensions of LEGO bricks. In fact, the 2x4 brick is the golden standard that everything is based on.

The inside of LEGO House is divided into four major sections, each with a different colour scheme that focuses on different parts of creativity. But all of this you can read about on the website. What is truly special about this place from an AFOL perspective is the top floor. It is known as the Masterpiece Gallery and is sort of an homage to the AFOL community.

Aside from being the home of three giant dinosaurs made from LEGO (one Duplo, one LEGO and one Technic), it has glass cases where AFOLs from around the world can be invited to display some of their MOCs for a period of one year. If I’m not mistaken, LEGO actually invited some AFOLs to be part of the design-process for that section and give feedback on how it should look. In total, there are 15 spots in the Masterpiece gallery so having your work there is statistically a bit of a longshot to say the least.

The Masterpiece Gallery empty in-between-MOCs.

The first time I heard about the Masterpiece Gallery was when a few of the people I followed on Flickr posted pictures from there. I was instantly blown away, and I started thinking about how awesome it would be to have some of my own LEGO creations in there. That thought took a bit of a hit when I started thinking about who had actually been invited there for that first year. I mean it was basically a “who’s who” of the AFOL community—people that regularly had their builds featured on all the super-cool blogs and everything. I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that there was no way I would ever have my MOCs on display there and, so I went back to building.

I kept building, and for some reason, quite a few of my builds started showing up on those super-cool blogs on a somewhat regular basis. At this point I had almost forgotten about the LEGO House until one day in the spring of 2018, an e-mail from someone named Jan Beyer showed up in my inbox. I opened it and it said that “they had seen my work on Flickr and that they would like to invite me to the Masterpiece Gallery to display some of my MOCs there.”

The first thought that popped up in my head was “who is this person trying to scam me?” Thankfully I responded (after Googling Jan Beyer, haha!) and it turned out it was very legit as he is a LEGO employee and a very well-known person in the LEGO community with the official title of AFOL Community Integration Manager. I was completely blown away. After a bit of back and forth ironing out all the details with the team at LEGO House, we settled on a few of my builds that I would bring to Billund in the fall of 2018. The following six months was weird as I remember thinking more than a handful of times that this was still just someone having a laugh and that I hadn’t really been invited at all.

As I live in Sweden, I decided that the best way to transport my builds to Billund would be to drive them down there myself. The trip takes about 12 to 14 hours including the ferry between Sweden and Denmark, so with the trunk of my car full of carefully packed builds, I set out on my journey in late September. I should probably mention that another reason I decided on driving instead of flying there was that I am notoriously incapable of building things that are sturdy and easy to transport…

Another build not well suited to travel with…

I had looked up the easiest way to get to Billund (if you guys don’t already know it, Billund is NOT exactly a large city with massive highways leading to the town center…) but somehow I took a wrong exit and ended up driving the last hour of the trip in pitch black, rainy conditions on a narrow road with the absolute conviction that I was about to die every time I met another car driving the opposite way.

Fortunately I made it there, and more importantly, my builds survived as well! I checked into the hotel and went to sleep. The next day I went down for some breakfast and met some of the other AFOLs that had been invited, including Rod Gillies and Tim Schwalfenberg. The whole time eating breakfast everything still felt pretty surreal, and I still had that feeling that it would somehow be revealed that I actually hadn’t been invited and that I would have to drive home with my builds still in the trunk of my car. That wasn’t the case, and we all spent the day setting up our builds in the Masterpiece Gallery. My spot was between Tim and Bruce Lowell, the guy behind the Lowell Sphere.

My sigfig watching Tim as he rebuilds his bridge.

Setting up my builds went pretty quickly for me as I had been able to drive there and everything was pretty fairly intact. Tim did not have the same experience as he had flown in and he pretty much had to rebuild a bridge from scratch… Another builder that was there was former BrickNerd Mel, probably best known for her awesome bikes. And as stunning as they are, they don’t seem to be all that much fun setting up as Mel spent more than a few hours getting everything done. Fortunately Stuart Harris, the Senior Experience Designer, was more than happy to help everyone out.

After an intense day that ended with me, Andrea Lattanzio and a few others having a beer in the hotel lobby, I finally went to sleep with the knowledge that my builds were now actually in the Masterpiece Gallery of LEGO House! I spent the day after the set-up exploring LEGO House together with Mel, Patrick Biggs as well as fellow BrickNerd Teresa and Warren Elsmore who were there setting up a build in another section of LEGO House.

Pondering the good fortunes that led us to the LEGO House.

As the day went on, more and more AFOLs started to show up as the gallery set-up coincided with LEGO House’s birthday and Skaerbaek Fan Weekend. I ran into a bunch of builders whose work I had admired for quite some time, including one of my favourite castle-builders and current LEGO Masters US contestant Mark Erickson.

Me trying not to act starstruck next to Mark.

Writing this story brings back so many awesome memories and it truly was an experience of a lifetime. The people I met there are some of the nicest ones I’ve ever met. I still keep in touch with quite a few of them and hope to meet them again as soon as the world hopefully goes back to some sort of normalcy. If you’ve read this far I would like to thank you for allowing me to share this amazing experience with you. If you have any questions just leave a comment below.

The other builders that I had the honour of sharing the Masterpiece gallery with during my time there were Koen Zwanenburg, Chung-Po Cheng, Rocco Buttliere, James Zhan, Bangoo H, Sonya Payer, Arzlan and Paul Lee. They are all awesome builders and great people, so make sure to check them out if you haven’t already.

I actually had the opportunity to visit the Lego house one more time with my wife and kids, as my builds were still on display there, and showing my family that my builds were in there was something I’ll never forget.

What builders do you think should exhibit at LEGO House? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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