Competition: LEGO House

I’m excited to announce New Elementary’s first ever competition! The fantastic team at LEGO®’s Community and Events Engagement Team have provided these wonderful prizes:

First prize: LEGO House
This exclusive set is only for sale in LEGO’s home town of Billund, Denmark. It’s a model of the new tourist destination currently being built there; an interactive museum showcasing The LEGO Group’s history, products and ethos.

Second prize: UN Headquarters
This recent Architecture set is an excellent build, and contains 155 Trans-Light Blue 1X2 plates! Sweet. You can read my review of it here.

How to enter

To enter, you need to build your own design for LEGO House. If it were up to you, what would this exciting museum look like? You are allowed to use up to 250 pieces in your model – which is the same piece count as the official set. You have until Thursday 15 May to enter, so there's plenty of time for multiple entries!

Sorry, but only those aged 18 or over are able to enter.

Rules for building:

• Only parts that have been produced by The LEGO Group are permitted.
• Customised parts are not permitted, with the exception of tubing which may be cut.
• Custom stickers/printing are not permitted. Official stickers or printed parts are fine.
• Digital entries are not permitted; it must be a physical model.
• No more than 250 pieces may be used.

To make your entry as good as it can be, take good pics of your model (in focus! Plenty of light! Plain background!). To submit, upload them to the LEGO House Competition Flickr Group I've created.

Rules for images:

• A maximum of 3 angles per entry may be uploaded.
• Some image editing is permitted, but most is not:
  
  Permitted:
• removing background
• colour/brightness/contrast adjustment that has been applied to the entire image
• a watermark of the entrant’s name/screen name if desired (but this is not a requirement). Please place unobtrusively in a corner.
Not permitted: Any other image editing. This includes but is not limited to:
• changing the colour of parts
• mimicking custom printing or stickers
• adding titles or explanatory text – please do so on the Flickr page instead
• Compositing several pictures into a single image – instead, please upload up to 3 images per entry.

If you want to get inspired, here's the official video about the building - but remember, you're coming up with your own design. You don't have to follow anything they've done in the actual building or set, and it doesn't need to fit on the same area of land. There is no need to design any interiors, nor do you need to specify what the function of each part of your building is, like they do in the video.

Judging

Judges will be asked to consider the following criteria when deciding winners, so entrants are encouraged to keep these in mind when designing.

• Creative approach. Judges will decide which designs are inspiring, innovative and of architectural merit. This is the primary criteria.
• Building technique. Judges will consider how the designs have used LEGO parts in a way that they consider to be appropriate, effective or innovative.
• Fitness for purpose. It is not necessary to define the specific functions of your design, but judges will consider overall whether the design is suitable as an exciting museum for The LEGO Group.

Once the competition has ended I will ask judges to create a shortlist of their favourites. I will collate which entries are popular to create a second shortlist. Judges will then score this list and collated scores will define the winners.

The four judges will be:

• Yvonne Doyle, a fantastic builder from the UK who you may know from her gorgeous chapter in The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 2. She has also reviewed sets for New Elementary.
• Chris McVeigh, a talented builder and graphic designer from Canada; you may know him as Powerpig. He sells kits of his cool designs as well as providing beautiful instructions for free.
• I wanted to include a non-AFOL architect on the panel. Who better than an architect I’ve known for 43 years who is one of New Elementary’s biggest fans? Yes, my mum, Jo Johnson (B. Arch. Dip TP (Lond) FRAIA MAPI).
• Tim Johnson. That’s me.

Terms and conditions

• Entrants must be 18 years or older.
• First prize is 1 sealed copy of set 4000010 LEGO House. Second prize is 1 sealed copy of 21018 United Nations Headquarters.
• To be considered, entries must be photographed and uploaded to the Flickr Group set up for this competition. This is found at www.flickr.com/groups/2616190@N20. Therefore entrants will need a Flickr (Yahoo) account to enter.
• Entrants may enter as many times as they like, but only 3 uploads per entry are permitted.
• The competition opened on Monday 14 April 2014 and will close at the end of Thursday 15 May 2014. Entries received after this date will not be considered.
• Judging will commence on Friday 16 May 2014 and will end on Thursday 22 May 2014.
• Winners will be announced on newelementary.com on Friday 23 May 2014.
• The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
• Winners will be contacted via Flickr on Friday 23 May 2014 to arrange delivery of the prizes. Alternatively, winners can contact New Elementary using the contact form on the right-hand side of every page of newelementary.com. If no response is received from a winner within 90 days, the prize may be forfeited and used as a future competition prize.

Good luck!