City Skyline Bookends

Looking for a unique and functional LEGO display for your home? Check out the City Skyline Bookends! There is something magical about a lit up nighttime skyline that includes a bridge, it is a reminder of the human capacity for combining engineering and art. What better medium to celebrate the mixture of those skills than LEGO bricks?

These bookends feature an imaginary city - they are not based on any specific real life city or bridge. They show a range of buildings behind a waterfront, with a bridge spanning the two sides. I've included some micro building techniques to depict cars driving onto and off of the bridge via exchanges and couldn't resist creating a gif to show a loop of traffic at night. If you look closely you can see the little headlights and brake lights as cars drive from one end of the city to the other.

The bookends feature some fun LEGO geometry and "SNOT" (studs not on top) building techniques. While the sides are plates facing outwards, the structure behind them is solid and locked together via axles. The "inner" side that would be up against the books uses some industrial looking support girders to stay on theme, and those are overlaid with brackets to hold up the plates. There is an exposed section in this vertical wall for the top of the main bridge support to lock into. This offsets the tension of the rigid hose that forms the main bridge cable.

The backs of the bookends are stabilized on the bottom with a combination of centered brackets (BL part 41682) and 2x2 inverse curved slopes holding the plates up vertically. These are then locked to the inner side using technic axles which pass through 1x1 technic bricks and modified plates with pin holes (BL part 18677). The bottom axle in the picture below is highlighted red for clarity.

The entire structure is designed so that there are no half-plate sized gaps between any of the 3 dimensional planes of each bookend. A satisfying "tile meets tile" junction occurs at each 90 degree angle.

And finally, one of my favorite parts - the little boats floating serenely along the river by the bridge, made from Minifigure armor shoulder pads :)

I think this would be a great non-licensed product for the architecture lovers, book lovers, and overall LEGO enthusiasts who enjoy having unique conversation pieces in their home or office.

Thanks for checking out the product and let your friends who love to read, write, or build know about the potential for these bookends!