Blego is a deliberately badly made construction kit with building components that must be pounded together to make them fit. The various parts are all carefully mis-made, so that none of them are evenly sided, or join together very well. Strings and wires are therefore required additions to hold things unto each other, and many of the parts have holes drilled in them to facilitate this type of improvised joint.
Also included with Blego are multiple sheets of fake rusty, corrugated iron sheets and segments of dismantled vehicles. These enable the intrepid builder to construct a range of authentic broken down shacks that are generally the type of dwelling which one would expect to find in a shanty town or favela.-- xenzag, Sep 25 2007 Made with Blego http://farm1.static...1870_b06f983156.jpg [xenzag, Sep 25 2007] (?) Blego-land http://www.transpor...t/images/favela.jpg [xenzag, Sep 25 2007] (?) Outskirts of Cairo http://bbsnews.net/...0705103_G.sized.jpg(notes to self) rem to include TV satellite dishes [xenzag, Sep 25 2007] There are several cheap Lego clones (they'll have something like "Compatible with the leading brick system!" on the package) which go someway down this road, in that they're not made to the same very high tolerances Lego is made to and so don't fit together that well.-- hippo, Sep 25 2007 I like the idea for producing authentic favellas, but I think this would work better if the bricks only *appeared* to be broken and crumbling, when in fact the interiors are normal. I personally don't fancy pounding the pieces to make them fit, it would hurt.-- jtp, Sep 25 2007 no please.-- dentworth, Sep 25 2007 what hippo said, I remember my lads using something called betabilda that was a pig to try to fit together. I wrote and complained and told them that they should have bilt them beta.-- po, Sep 25 2007 Not sure why the boxes the Lego comes in can't simply be repurposed for this use.-- DrCurry, Sep 25 2007 I understand what you are saying [jtp] et all, but if everything fitted together well, it would remove the element of improvisation and problem solving.
The frustration of badly made construction kits arises from the expectation of things, which should fit perfectly, not doing so. With Blego there is no such expectation.
If you want to build perfect structures use Lego, but if you want to build gammy, lean-to shacks, held together with bits of wire, and encrusted with scrap components - use Blego.-- xenzag, Sep 25 2007 I like this. I imagine pieces that are engineered just as carefully as the lego ones (and *do* fit together well, if only you found the right ones - which you never do), but have irregular angles to them that cause them to not quite fit, plus methods of improvisation (like the string/hole system xenxag describes) to make up for that.-- jutta, Sep 25 2007 catually...?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 25 2007 A friend of mine worked with Habitat For Humanity - a volunteer scheme where people can sign up and provide assistance in building projects around the world. In some instances, they use scaled-up lego-style blocks in order to build walls that might otherwise require more advanced bricklaying skills than might be available - quite ingenious.-- zen_tom, Sep 25 2007 I know a lot about that type of building system because I worked on a basement for two days that was made out of those blocks, and my parents were supposedly going to have a new house built with them... It hasn't happened yet and I don't think it ever will.
Anyway, this whole idea is kind of like torture to me... if the name "Lego" wasn't used, then I might be ok with it.-- BJS, Sep 25 2007 random, halfbakery