Lego Pattern Language

I've started work on a pattern language for the construction of things using basic Lego blocks. I'm doing this because:

1. I'm interested to try finding a pattern language.
2. Lego seems like such a "common sense", practical, and simple thing that I hope potential patterns will tend to be obviously useful or obviously useless.
3. It's something that just about everyone is familiar with. Hopefully I will be able to demonstrate the power of patterns to friends who aren't interested in computers nor architecture with these. Actually I don't think I can get any of my friends to sit down and play lego with me, but it seems like a good idea in spirit.
4. I found an old box of lego so the materials are readily available.
5. I can sit in the sun and the breeze and drink beer while playing with lego, so it gets me away from the screen for a bit.
6. Perhaps some of Alexander's own patterns could be applied to the construction of Lego houses.

This first afternoon's work has been encouraging in that some potential patterns and idioms spring up right away, and somewhat frustrating in that I keep running out of blue bits.

-- LukeGorrie

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A Pattern Language my two year old son would rejoice in!

How about "stagger legos like bricks". It makes for much stronger walls than when you build parallel stacks of the same brick...

KyleBrown

I HaveThisPattern. I forgot where I read it, but I learned it when I was 7.

I'm still refining the patterns for walls. This staggered style gives good strength, but forces very tight coupling between everything and can create a lot of refactoring work if you want to make a change like adding a window. The most versatile walls for me have sofar been using parallel stacks, with some staggering (keeping things neat by using some smaller or larger bricks to get the same overall width) every 3 or 4 levels. Another motivation for easily refactored walls is that you often need to swap bricks when you're adding door-hinges etc. I imagine that all of these patterns for building walls have peculiar uses, it's just a matter of finding the situations where they work best.

LukeGorrie

I prefer the skeleton pattern when using LegoTechnic?. When I was younger I also found the idea of components very interesting, and often built modular spaceships. There was a cockpit, a staff container, plug-in weaponry and drones. The transition between Lego and ObjectOrientedProgramming was smooth. -- ManuelSimoni

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If you are interested in LegoTechnicSystem? patterns look at this article from the MitMediaLaboratory?: ArtOfLego

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It's such fun to look back on this page and remember just how much time I had on my hands back then :-) -- LukeGorrie

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see also: LegoToy