A Look Behind Market Street

A Look Behind Market Street Interview by Tormod Askildsen and Joe Meno Photography courtesy of the LEGO Group The newest fan-designed LEGO set to come from LEGO Factory is Market Street. With over 1200 pieces, the set is not only an impressive companion to the already-released Café Corner, it’s also the first set to use a new theme, called ‘Modular Houses’. This new series will let aspiring house designers create and purchase their own and other users’ house modules on www.LEGOFactory.com. The Market Street set designer Eric Brok, a Dutchman, has been building for about ten years. His initial interest was in the Technic theme, but later expanded to include almost everything. It was only a matter of time after he joined the Dutch LEGO club, De Bouwsteen, that he would begin building not only models, but a great reputation. Eric designed large-scale models, from a model of a brewery plant to a tugboat and even a functional amusement park ride. He has also traveled to LEGO conventions in the United States and Europe, including MINDFest and BrickFest in the US and LEGO World in the Netherlands. This all culminated in Eric being selected as one of the first LEGO Ambassadors…and later to designing this set. BrickJournal interviewed Eric about the Market Street.

BJ: Since this was a fan-based design, you had to work with some LEGO designers. Who did you work with?
Eric Brok: When I developed the LEGO Market Street model, I worked with the LEGO Creator design team in Billund, a great bunch of people. They were hospitable, helpful and fun. In particular I worked closely with Jamie Berard, who had just designed the Cafe Corner set (#10182).

BJ: What was the goal of the set and your design?
EB: As a LEGO Factory set, Market Street was to showcase a fan design, thus promoting the Design-it-yourself vision of LEGO Factory. The modularity of the resulting model also may inspire people to design their own floor modules (or furniture sets) in Factory, without having to build an entire house.

BJ: That’s a great idea, but also challenging. How did you decide to work with modularity?
EB: For the Market Street model I concentrated on modularity within a single set. So I chose a simple 16×16 square footprint for each floor. This way, the floors can be turned around as well as stacked in different ways. After I sketched out the main building, I absolutely wanted to add a simple side structure to it, if only to supply a second base and roof. This way, floor modules from the main building could be rearranged over two bases. I chose simple arcades with a flat roof. And that’s what made the set a Market Street.

BJ: Tell us about how you made the roof – it’s a clever building solution!
EB: A typical feature of the building is the stepped front top. I used this style before, not just because it is common in old Dutch cities. I never liked the look of classic LEGO roof building, where the slope bricks produce a roof with jagged underside. So I used the stepped front to hide the roof bricks from sight. However, I didn’t want the model to look exclusively Dutch/Belgian. So I did a second roof in international style, slopes at front, like in Cafe Corner. Then I realized the set could offer both, allowing the customer to turn the roof around to best fit his or her town. At another side, a balcony was added for variety and play value. The roof module can also be exchanged altogether for the flat roof of the side structure, resulting in a classic American building.

BJ: There are places that may not fit as well rearranged as they could in the set. How did you deal with that?
EB: When rearranging floor modules, the balconies may end up in strange places, such as the ground floor, so the balconies were redesigned for easy removal. Also, there are several fixtures sticking out from the front, such as lamp and flag poles. When rearranging the modules, these fixtures may have to be moved. So I consider the headlight bricks spread over the front as a ‘modular’ system in itself: at each spot you can fit a fixture or a pneumatic t-part as filler.

BJ: Was there anything you discovered while designing this set that was unexpected?
EB: We are all aware that it is expensive for The LEGO Group to develop new shapes or new colors. But I didn’t realize before, that even a new combination of existing shape and existing color is costly. So if a project does not have a budget for ‘new parts, or that budget is spent, it means the designer is restricted to use only the shape/color combinations that are already in production. TLG calls this the ‘active components’. In practice this means that a basic door may be only currently available in few colors, and you’re lucky if they aren’t purple and pink.

So if you’re a LEGO fan with a wide piece selection at home, you may well have a wider palette to build with than professional LEGO designers!

BJ: What was the best part of designing the Market Street set?
EB: The freedom I had, so I could make something I really liked myself. I liked some gimmicks, such as the green cabbage.

General information
1. Market Street is a LEGO Factory Exclusive and is online at http://factory.lego.com/modularhouses/
2. Recommended age is 10+
3. The set contains 1248 pieces
4. Price point is 89.99$
5. The set comes with printed building instructions.
6. The building instructions are also available online in LXF format from LDD at this site.
7. You can integrate Market Street with other modular buildings like Café Corner and hence create a whole street. Café Corner (set number 10182) was launched in April 2007 and is also Direct Exclusive set.

Packaging
The packaging is available in 2 different versions: A North American version and an International version.

LDD
Market Street was designed using the LEGO Digital Designer software. Consumers can learn more about the software and download it for free at the LEGO Factory website. The Modular House page is at this webpage.

LEGO Factory
At www.LEGOFactory.com, they can design and build:
– Market Street their way
– Their very own LEGO house or town

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