Finished in August 2015, it was designed from the beginning as an aquarium to inspire the viewers to create their own aquariums, not wanting to introduce live fish because of the great effort due to the its cleaning. I wanted to “celebrate” the launch in June 2015 of the new LEGO theme City Deep Sea so I used most of the theme original sets, without bringing many modifications for the eventual buyers to see them displayed and especially “underwater”.
It represents exploration scenes with divers and submarines and also a shipwreck found on the bottom of the sea with all the situations involved, such as shark attacks and a giant squid.
Not being populated with fish, it doesn’t contain the electronic part and the cover of it with LEGO parts wasn’t necessary, as I succeeded in the case of the “Castle Ruins” Aquarium.
The aquarium has a 3 Lego base plates with 32×32 studs, the capacity being of 90 liters of water.
The challenges were the following:
- The use of some floating LEGO parts which emerge at the surface of the water if they are not fitted on the lower plate. I made several tests and I needed to adopt several different constructions techniques because of that.
- That the model does not emerge at the surface of the water once it is filled with water due to the Archimedes’ law. The same was with the submarines and sharks, but especially in the case of the divers who had fins which didn’t permit the fitting of the small figures on the base plate. I had to change the model in some parts in order to insure the “embedding” of several lead fishing parts with masses between 20 and 150 grams on the base plate but also some smaller loads which I embedded into the sharks.
- Wanting to keep the commercial display of the original sets as less modified as possible I tried, however, to make the final design not to look as there were some sets thrown in the aquarium. So I created and added more stones, I used plants and through a more careful arrangement, some interesting scenes using the divers, sharks, squids and submarines from this sets.
Official LEGO sets unmodified / partly modified: 60090, 60091, 60092 and 60095.
Technical details
- Dimensions: 76 cm X 26 cm X 45 cm (the glass’s size without the pieces built
above the surface of the water) - Pieces: 1327
- Project worktime: 2 weeks
PHOTO GALLERIES
Overall view
The Submarine
The Divers
The Boat
Details
Making Of
Exhibitions
- The Galactic Ethnology, Cluj-Napoca, 30 May 2016 – 5 June 2016
- “CUCUBAU” Toy Store, Baia-Mare (August 2015 – April 2016)
