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Andrew Lipson, has created numerous, complex sculptures from Lego® building blocks. He’s done many math surfaces and technical objects, but also copies of Escher's elliptical optical illusion drawings, complex buildings and other whimsys. What's interesting from the RP perspective is that he accomplishes this by layered construction from a self-written computer program. He has thus converted himself into a sort of RP machine. "Marvel at the wasted hours..." Andrew starts by writing a description of the object in C code that generates an LDraw output file. Just as in any RP process, this is the data required to indicate which areas should be filled in brick by brick for each slice of the object. While still in this virtual mode before construction is begun, he varies the parameters of the surface until he feels it’s both aesthetically pleasing and will balance and hold together. The challenge at that point is to be able to make the object out of the remaining Lego bricks in his collection.         A Lego® Klein bottle, exterior and interior split-open views.   While the math surfaces represent the closest nexus to RP technically, the work he and Daniel Shiu have done to replicate Escher’s drawings is quite interesting. It was necessary to precisely deconstruct the two-dimensional drawings to design and build a three-dimensional object which provides the optical illusion in the drawing. While most of us have marveled at Escher’s cleverness and ability to trick our eyes, it’s not so obvious that what’s really going on in the drawings is that we are looking at a very cockeyed physical object from a unique perspective. It’s rather amazing that it’s possible to physically build what Escher drew - and they have done it.     Escher's Ascending and Descending Stairs and Rodin's Thinker.   The connection to RP in this work may be less far-fetched and whimsical than it seems. Recent patents describe the formation of complex MMD devices from discrete, active building blocks, for example. One day we may only view Legos as simply being at the macro-end of the RP scale.   For more info see: Andrew Lipson's LEGO® Page andrew.lipson@ntlworld.com Some additional mathematical surfaces in Legos®. All photos courtesy of Andrew Lipson. Photos copyrighted by Andrew Lipson. All rights reserved.