School pupils wreck Lego Holyrood building to create Nessie

Published on Friday 10 July 2009 09:43

MANY people might love to demolish the Scottish Parliament and build something else in its place.

But that chance was given to pupils at Royal Mile Primary School when they were handed a Lego model of the 414m Holyrood building.

The real thing took five years to build and caused much controversy – but the model was demolished in just 90 seconds and everyone was happy.

The youngsters then used the bricks to replace the parliament building with a model of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.

It was all part of a project which the toy company described as using the power of children's imaginations to re-interpret iconic structures across the UK.

The company teamed up with the Brickish Association – the UK forum for adult fans of Lego – to see what pupils could make of buildings like Big Ben, Blackpool Tower and the Angel of the North as well as the Scottish Parliament building.

Edinburgh-based Warren Elsmore, chairman of the Brickish Association, said: "Lego worked with us to recreate a number of famous buildings in Lego. Our members built them and we took them to schools in the area, where the kids smashed them up and built something else out of them."

The Lego version of the parliament building took Brickish Association member Alastair Disley, who is based in Kent, around 100 hours to put together.

"As soon as we had taken the photographs of the model they were tearing it apart," Mr Elsmore said. "It took them about 90 seconds to demolish it.

"We worked with the kids to see what ideas they came up with. We wanted to do something Scottish and Nessie was an obvious choice."

Mr Elsmore, 32, from Broughton Street, said despite their enthusiasm for destroying the model, the youngsters do like the real parliament building.

He said: "The school is right next to the back of the building, so they are used to seeing it. They like the design and the shape and the colours. The kids do quite like the parliament, unlike most of us.

"I've seen it look nice once – one day from the top of Arthur's Seat when we had really good sunshine. The rest of the time, I think it's too grey for Edinburgh."