James May: New Lego & Meccano Engineering Series

Quite - to clarify the where-is-the-lego-going situation, I just had an email from Plum. It wasn't their lego at all - it was rented and now it's going back, as they think Lego will be using it for a charity event.
So - sounds like all the assessments of what was happening to it were overheard half-truths that got extrapoloated.
 
150 QUID EACH!?!?!?!?? What a joke.

But she notes

"We have started this at what we think is a reasonable starting price"

Best of luck to them.
 
Looks like American media is picking up on the tale of the lego house. When I opened my browser this morning (which is set to www.hp-desktop.aol.com if you want to see for yourself) the first image that popped up was a picture of the house with the headline "Man Built Home With Lego Bricks". The title is a bit misleading as it leads one to think of one man building the thing on their own!

Here is the link to the actual article, although it doesn't offer much new:

http://www.shelterpop.com/2009/09/22/life-size-lego-house-built-and-demolished
 
150 pounds for a toothbrush OR a toothpaste? That's just ridiculous, no one will pay that much. Maybe 50.
 
Looks like American media is picking up on the tale of the lego house. When I opened my browser this morning (which is set to www.hp-desktop.aol.com if you want to see for yourself) the first image that popped up was a picture of the house with the headline "Man Built Home With Lego Bricks". The title is a bit misleading as it leads one to think of one man building the thing on their own!

Here is the link to the actual article, although it doesn't offer much new:

http://www.shelterpop.com/2009/09/22/life-size-lego-house-built-and-demolished

Nope, is just rehashes of stuff the papers here printed.

I gave up my precious day off yesterday to drive back to Surrey to help Heidi save the Lego flag, only to then see it "murdered" with a saw because the production company decided they only wanted a 1/4 of it :cry:
 
According to HWMNBN, anyway, Nicky. I'm sorry about that. I think he may have implied to Plum that I'd only be prepared to take it apart in sections and repair it if I was paid to.
 
According to HWMNBN, anyway, Nicky. I'm sorry about that. I think he may have implied to Plum that I'd only be prepared to take it apart in sections and repair it if I was paid to.

Right, i'm making a voodoo doll of that man!
( or else I'll sic Harry Potter on him ;))
 
I'm only guessing from what he said to me. As with everything related to this, I have no concrete info.
 
I make this comment based on what I have gleaned from this thread, rather then read and digested every word and so I hope no offence is caused.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, of which there is I imagine very little, I would venture that James May would be as disappointed as I, to see the efforts of Heidl and Ozgirl, and of course the many hundreds of others, treated in such a valueless manner. Lest we forget, the production company has pre-sold the project to the BBC with a view to making a profit, and the Lego House, as with the other projects, would not have happened were it not for the many volunteers involved. The majority of those were involved not, ?to be on telly? but because of a respect and affection for James May, and a desire to invest in to some great ideas, ideas that might just help families find the energy for genuine creative play away from the TV and the Xbox.

Plum Pictures, as part of the plan for the project, will have, or at least should have, considered the size of the task and the aftermath, and made known the plans to demolish within 72 hours of completion, the rented materials, as well as made ironclad any deal with Legoland if ever there was one.

An impartial observer would be forgiven the impression that the positive publicity before completion was obviously to the producers advantage, and to keep the post-completion plans for the house quiet was equally to the producers advantage. After completion, the negative publicity pointed at others gave them an ?out?, and both were cynically manipulated with no sincere thought to those who had invested a good deal of their own time, creativity and I?m sure costs on travel etc.

Would I be wrong to suggest the producers company should be renamed Plum Cocks?
 
It's difficult to say, not being part of the company, quite what the actual truth is, but from where I'm sitting it seems that the project involved a number of large egos with their own agendas, and a number of people working for Plum who hadn't got much more idea of the full situation than us volunteers. It would be unfair to assume that everyone at Plum was wilfully misleading people, the chances are they were just passing on what they'd been told themselves and that rather a lot of chinese whispers had occurred.
I would also tend to assume, using my experience of IT companies of various sizes, that Plum are a company going through the painful process of metamorphosing from a small company to a medium sized one. During that process, there tend to be a lot of communication problems until things settle down because they were used to not needing official channels for the spread of information as there were so few people. I know there were contractors involved, and having done my share of that, it's often a huge struggle to get the information you need simply because the perm staff forget you need it, and you need to figure out for yourself who has that information - which often isn't obvious.
Small companies can often succeed at projects like this, done in a rather seat-of-the-pants way, which larger companies wouldn't even attempt because done 'properly' the costs go up exponentially. I would tend to say that the phrase 'Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence' applies - though I would hesitate to say that Plum were incompetent, exactly, because - albeit with a lot of help - they did pull this off.
 
Update about the series. Arlington (James's agent) has apparently e-mailed members of the Facebook Lego group that the first episode of Toy Stories will go out on October 29th! :)
 
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Ah, I didn't get that. I have just heard from facebook (god help me I gave in and joined it) that some of the meccano bridge people were invited to the housewarming because apparently they were working on that one for 2 months! Still a bit galling that after just over a month on the house not even Alison and I were invited, though. Probably just as well, though, as I'd probably have ended up lamping Tiff Needell for something.

Also, don't know if this has been mentioned:

http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/james_mays_lego_house

Guess whose photos they are. :)
 
Honestly, it seems fitting to me that the house was destroyed. Isn't that the typical fate of Lego constructions? Makes it like an overgrown living room project. I think it's kind of sweet, in a way.
 
Honestly, it seems fitting to me that the house was destroyed. Isn't that the typical fate of Lego constructions? Makes it like an overgrown living room project. I think it's kind of sweet, in a way.

In the end maybe, but I still do not like the way it was done. Take a month and a half to get it built, then less than a week later, tear it down?

I probably would not have had a chance to see the house in person although I am going to Ireland in the spring, but I have to say, the whole thing has pretty much put me off Lego. Lego was the project I was most looking forward to because it was so much a part of my son's life. Just knowing it was there made me feel good.

I think the blame goes to the construction company. I do not care what May wanted it was their job to tell him what could and couldn't be done. Everything they did was basically wrong in my eyes. Choice of location was a poor choice. Time to completion was wrong, but I expect that with any construction company. Ever had a real house built? Lego's response was bad.

For a project that I was so excited about, the whole situation has left me feeling cold. I also think there is a lot of lying going on, and nothing pisses me off more than to be lied to. The wine estate is now saying that the house could have been left there as long as anyone wanted. But James said he was feeling like his arm was being twisted to take it down. Lego has said they regniged on taking the house because they were not consulted in the construction resulting in the house being essentially unfeasiable to move. I sort of believe that part because I could see it would have been a booger to move. If *I* sitting 3000 miles away could see it, why couldn't the people who were responsinble for making it happen?

I could be wrong, but it is May I believe out of everyone. I just don't think Plum was up for the job. They failed and are now looking for ways to weasel out of it. I have had a real house built. I know how it works. And I don't care what anyone else said, the construction company fucked up big time and it is time they admitted it. (not saying ALL the blame is their's, but WAY more then half)
 
Well the sour grapes so far haven't been on the part of any of the volunteers, but I can see that changing fast if it turns out we were lied to.

IMHO, sour grapes were to be expected. It is kind of the raison d'etre for a vineyard, after all. Although the ones near the house were moderately sweet...
 
I have followed this whole series quite closely from when it first was announced. As far as I can remember it wasn't said anywhere (in the press at least) beforehand that any of the six projects would be saved afterwards.

It was a pleasant surprise to me to hear the Plasticine garden was transported to the Southbank and later on to a museum, as was the Airfix plane that will be kept somewhere on display as well. They tried to save the Lego house. It fell through. Big shame. Life goes on.

Plum and James succesfully did what they were asked to do: to produce a six part series about toys. I can't wait until the first episode airs. (October 29th!)
 
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So what if it hadn't been spelled out before it started? The Lego house was the last thing they did. The plane and the garden was saved. I do not think it was unreasonable for anyone to expect the Lego house to be saved. And if they had had competent people building it (not talking about the volunteers here, but the people "in charge") it could have been. Maybe not forever, but long enough for those who wanted to to be able to arrange a time to go view it to have that chance. It may have had to go in the end, but it is finished on Thur and knocked down on Tuesday????

Because of fuck up after fuck up, by the people "in charge" of building it, that chance is gone probably forever. Had they had the sense to consult with Lego, the house would have been saved. And that is it in a nut shell.

Yeah, life goes on and they got their show and I will enjoy seeing it, but I will not forget what happened to the house.
 
Actually I don't think it's fair to place the blame entirely on Plum, as there were a number of people from outside the company making a lot of the decisions. Barnaby the architect I haven't spoken to much, so I don't know if his design brief included it being suitable for being moved, but I doubt it. As I understand it, the original design didn't include the wooden frame and had to be adjusted for that as we went along, and I believe that task was shared partly between 'lego James' and possibly Christina the interior designer, she certainly ended up doing a fair bit of other stuff.
When I last spoke to the site manager - the builder responsible for the platform, the wooden frame, etc - he said that he was never told that it might need to be moved and if he had been, he would have made the platform differently, but didn't because it would have cost a lot more.
It's very easy to look at the project from the outside now it's over and find fault, but none of the people involved had done anything *quite* like this before, so naturally mistakes will be made and hopefully lessons learned. I've never worked on anything which took more than a few people more than a few days and not been able to look back on it and pinpoint several things which ought to have been done differently.
 
I am not placing ALL the blame on Plub, but I am placing most of it on them. If they did not know what they were doing, and obviously they didn't, they needed to pass it on to someone who did.

Picking and choosing people that did different bits and saying they can not be blamed may be true individually, but they should have worked as a team. Questions should have been asked and if answers not given, then they should ask again.

The guy who built the platform does not seem to have been given any direction and was left to do what he thought best. He obviously didn't know. That was failure on Plum's part.

I have also worked on projects that things could have been done differently, but never to the scale of this project. From the ground up, this project was a fuck up. Yes, they were hired to build a house, and a house was built. But someone must have known only they did not have the balls to say, hang on a minute.

I think it was pretty much known that Lego was interested or someone should have at least considered the possibility. Why were they not consulted?

Yeah, I know it was a toy house. Yeah, I know it was built for a tv show. Yeah, I know it would probably come down one day. I just never expected it 4 days after it was finished.

And I know Plub knows they fucked it up. Not one person, the whole outfit.
 
I suspect that Vic would have done things his own way whatever to be honest. He did say that the decision to bring it down on Tuesday was his as he wanted to go on to other projects as quickly as possible, so that's one that Plum can't be blamed for. That seems to be the one which people are the most upset with.
That said, it seems to me that the main issue, which led to all the others, was that they didn't have a project manager with an overall view of the complete project on site. Whoever that person was, they would have needed to be a *very* forceful personality, as some of the non-plum people involved were themselves quite forceful, and used to being in charge rather than in a team.
I wouldn't say that Plum as a group are blameless, or that they didn't make mistakes but I will say that they're far from unique. They seem to be a small organisation, similar to some of the IT companies I've worked for, and when you are small, working in a seat-of-the-pants way, without project managers, can often be very effective.
 
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