Free LEGO and importance of spatial intelligence

How do these two things from the headline go together? Well, the story goes like this. A few weeks ago, I entered a LEGO giveaway on youtube and surprisingly, I won!

Winning something is always awesome, even though it is just a small LEGO set. That reminds me to thank guys from Free Gifts Giveaway channel for this awesome gift!

And the set arrived.

Awesome tiny Wookie gunship! I love Star Wars and all, however here I write more about architecture and life. And for this one particular build, I challenged myself. The challenge was to build it just by looking at the main picture.

It is quite different from just following the instruction manual. Basically, I started with the parts that can be clearly seen and then I moved to those hidden and the guessing game started.

And with little trial and error, I managed to build it correctly.

This exercise is great not just for architects, but for everyone, including small children. Spatial intelligence and awareness is a great skill. And it was fun to build it that way, more challenging.

I really liked it and I am planning to build further sets in this way. It will be much more challenging to try this with a set containing more than for example 300 pieces. That would be a challenge worthy of an architect.

And little more about the connection with architecture. Architects have that amazing ability to imagine places that are not built yet or even places that will never be built. This spatial imagination is a skill, that architects learn through their whole life. Experiencing spaces, lessons in studio or building with LEGO as I do. These activities help us to improve our imagination. They help us to imagine, what might be reality one day.

Cheers