It’s almost Halloween, and the more intrepid architects amongst us might be preparing their scariest costumes to terrorize and delight the local neighborhood. However, for those too scared to venture out over the next few nights, we suggest putting your model-making skills to good use — and LEGO artist Mike Doyle is just the man to provide some spooky inspiration.
Doyle uses LEGO in weird and wonderful ways to create eerily beautiful Victorian houses that stray far from the pristine, pixelated structures we have come to expect from those iconic plastic bricks. The artist composes scenes in a fragmented style with extraordinary attention to detail, culminating in structures that look uncannily like the ruined mansions frequented by urban explorers in the real world.
“To my eyes, patterns of decay find a more pleasing path than an untouched object,” explains Doyle. “A roof collapsed by the weight of snow, side shingles ripped by the force of winds, substructures rotting, insects and weather gnawing the exposed surfaces.”
Particularly impressive is the way Doyle utilizes standard LEGO pieces in highly unconventional ways to create landscape elements that are often organic, even fluid in nature. For one house, he modeled a fallen tree crashing through the front facade; for another, he perched the building precariously on top of a mud heap, manipulating bricks to create models that, on first viewing, barely look like LEGO structures at all. According to Doyle, this house — one of his most detailed to date — “speaks to the inherent unpredictability of those things which we call our foundation.”
He continues: “Like a little dollhouse, a seemingly secure home is plucked up and set on a new path. This charming home, lovingly embellished with ornamental fancy, was no match for nature. The fancy embellishments serve as a reminder of our earlier focus on the material world, while the aftermath removes us from that focus. The piece offers no answers or necessarily any hope, but rather points to life’s fragility.”
Doyle’s perseverance is as impressive as his houses are terrifying: Three Story Victorian on a Mud Heap took nearly 600 hours to construct and comprises a hair-raising 130,000 LEGO pieces. If you’re not one for patience, that thought should be enough to give you nightmares this Halloween weekend …
All models and images by Mike Doyle