Flag-Raising Tower

Celebrating 50 years for our Italian scout movement need the best gift possible; why not imagining to realize the first Lego-Set with a Scout movement theme?!

The Flag-raising tower is common in all part of the world and is a symbol that create connections for all scout movement of the world. This is particular is an huge demonstration of human strength and imagination; the real structure is about 25 meters height, made of wood only and under it you feel connected with all the people near you.

The massive structure represents the multitude of people of the scout movement, the twist of the poles starting from the bottom e going to the up is the relations between people.

Stairs invite to look the sky and go every step higher, flags are the happiness which is flying free with the wind, but with solid roots on the ground.

The tower is:

And even if it is made of wood only, can support on the higher platform, more than 1000 kgs.

To complete it there are 5 middle platforms and 6 stairs to collect them.

Asking to the designer of this, he told me that he took several months before realizing the project of this monumental structure; the principal problems were related that it should be a weight-bearing structure and, he wanted that was also beautiful; combining these two characteristics, this tower was born.

Sizes and number of pieces are:

Number of pieces: 606

Dimensions:

Trying to maintain the real proportion, dimensions of the model are a little bit "squeezed" compared with the original, proportioned with the tiny little scout minifigure. With this model, everybody can imagine to built is own Flag-raising tower, inspired and imagining to build the original one.

The weight-bearing structure of the model is realized with Lego technic; this choice helps me a lot to create a solid and stable model which is, as the original tower, self-supporting. This means that with or without baseplant, the tower can stand by itself. The most important support-point is in the exact middle of the base of the structure; that it is the only piece which connect the tower to the baseplant.

So now that I wrote what it is, I want to spend some words explaining why I built it.

After a big event celebrating the 50 years of my Italian scout movement, in which we were almost 20 thousand scout leaders from all part of Italy, a thought and than a dream was born in my mind: "represent with something that I love, the Lego bricks, the flag-raising tower that 20 thousand scout leaders hugged during that big event". Everybody knows that scouts love building wood structure, do knots, but not all scouts are in touch with Lego bricks; my desire with the model of this is trying to get more scout than I can, closer to Lego bricks and Lego philosophy. The flag-raising tower for a scout and a scout-leader first, is like a lighthouse in the night, is the symbol of starting and ending days during the summer-camp and this flag-raising tower, most of all, is a symbol of community for this 20 thousand scout leaders that this summer lived under its magnificence and this 20 thousand scout leaders are the "spokesman" of all scouts of my Italian scout movement, composed by almost 200 thousand boys and girls, from 8 to 20 years. So for that reason I realized this model; TO CREATE A MODEL OF WHAT EVERY SCOUT LOVES AND KNOWS AND TO CONNECT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE TO LEGO BRICKS.

This will be a great Lego set for a lot of reasons:

I think I cannot explain better than this why I think this will be a great Lego. It was and it is my dream, something that makes me happy and I am 100% sure that this is a dream for a lot of other people and can make all of them happy as I am.