LAB on the Road
Imagine roaming around your city a trailer, with design inspired on famous LEGO® built houses, in which lies the world’s craziest lab playroom. Youngsters of all ages can explore the infinite possibilities of LEGO bricks while helping to develop scientific projects and contraptions designed by the LAB team through amazing workshops that blend LEGO, Science and Technology!
The LAB – Advanced Bricks Laboratory – has been utilizing LEGO as a tool for the development of conceptual and scientific innovationprojects along with offering courses and workshops that aim to expand the youngsters’ perception of the toy’s capacity while familiarizing them with wide Scientific, Technological and Innovative topics for 8 years. Our experience with the lessons have presented excellent outcomes regarding concentration capacity, logical thinking, self-confidence, teamwork and creative autonomy. Furthermore, our lessons have led to important scientific partnerships such as the one with CNPEM (National Energy and Materials Research Center).
The positive results of our work alongside the youth are broadened to an extensive amount of people through two branches. Firstly, we publish videos of our lessons in our YouTube Channel, O Diário do Laboratório. Secondly, we establish fruitful partnerships with scientific institutions such as CNPEM, an internationally respected research institution, having exposed a project during the National Science and Technology Week, promoted by the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, in October 2015.
That is why the LAB na Estrada project is delivering this experience, currently limited to our headquarters in Campinas, São Paulo, to youngsters of various cities and locations, in a collaboration with our partners (LUG Brasil, AprendaRobótica, Curso Higgs among others).
There are people similar to me around the world: LUG Ambassadors, LCPs, MCPs, LUG associates, Afols, teachers, LEGO scientists and shop owners. They use LEGO as a work tool in different fields, knowing deeply the building experience and they would love to share this expertise with more people.This work enriches the community in both educational and social aspects, allowing children, teenagers and adults to live the experience of playing with LEGO while learning significantly and getting to know and share innovative ideas with each other and with the rest of the world. We want everyone to be a part of this project!
In an age in which the word “connection” gains an increasingly broader meaning and people establish connections worldwide, interdisciplinarity is progressively more present in education. We discover how much everything around the globe is linked. We discover how LEGO can be utilized as a tool for elaboration, comprehension and transformation of reality. This also means that the experiments created and developed by us and by all LEGO professionals in their respective fields can reach even farther by following the compacting tiny house, food truck global trends.
Inside the Mobile LAB, our itinerant LAB model, workshops, educationaland recreational activities, project exhibitions and building tournaments are going to be lead. Bearing an especially planned environment,the Mobile LAB can also serve as a playroom littered with lots of LEGO pieces of all kinds, including auxiliary equipment such as books, computers, laboratory apparatus and other tools! Considering that the LAB na Estrada project aims to share all the knowledge and experience adquired with even more people, the activities will be filmed and published in our YouTube channel, Diário do Laboratório.
As seen in the introductory video, my sons and I have already built a Mobile LAB with LEGO! Now, let’s all build an actual Mobile LAB, shall we?
The developed coupling trailer model was inspired by the design of LEGO built houses, with doors, the emblematic windows, an awning and roof. In the interior, a LEGO laboratory littered with pieces, workstations, shelves, seats and scientific/technical equipment. Through the trailer project, we seek to emphasize ecotechnology’s innovations and trends playfully and accessibly.
The designed trailer model is expansible and has 7m of width X 2,40m of depth X 3,80m of height while retracted. While expanded, the Mobile LAB bears 30m² of fenced external area, thematic reception, backdrop for photos and a LEGO-equipped waiting room capable of welcoming up to 15 children on the inside plus 15 children on the outside.
I am Marcelo Rios, a LEGO sciences teacher and designer/builder of the LAB – Bricks Advanced Laboratory, located in Campinas, São Paulo. I grew up assembling LEGO creations and dreaming about being na inventor. When my father died, in 2000, I decided to stop my Biochemichal Pharmacy course at university for an indefinite period. Being the oldest of 4 brothers, I founded with them a commercial scenography company.
Nevertheless, my passion for LEGO had never expired and in 2008, without abundant financial resources and having to recur to a loan, I designed and built my first exclusive LEGO product selling kiosk, that operated for almost 7 years in Shopping Iguatemi Campinas. It was a cozy, small, open, beautiful kiosk with a small table for kids to try out LEGO. It was reshaped other times through more and more innovative projects. See our Project Timeline here.
There I improved my knowledge about LEGO bricks and developed a new way of selling LEGO, carefully understanding my clients’ needs and desires in order to establish a long-lasting relationship.
In November 2011, at the store’s peak, I suffered from an unhappy misfortune: a fire that destroyed almost all of my Christmas stock.
Click here to see the brick recovery pictures.
“A broken dream is a dream to rebuild…”
It took me months to sort all pieces, bricks and minifigures that could be recovered. However, after all, an idea emerged and the reminiscent pieces gave birth to our playroom: a wide test area with thousands of bricks, where children can play as much as they want to while learning to see LEGO as a powerful work tool.
Our store was closed in June this year, as we noticed that our field of activities could be concentrated at our most fruitful area: recreation, research and scientific education using LEGO as a learning tool. Nowadays, we still own a bricks lab, especially built for youngsters to resort of our playroom and the experiments/workshops by us developed, situated in a prepared room at Cambuí neighborhood, in Campinas, São Paulo.
Anyhow, I want to reach even further by helping to enlarge the LEGO experience around the world together with builders and specialists.
Take a look at some of the experiments developed by the LAB:
Ink Droplet Accelerator Project – Experiment created with LEGO and other materials that led to research, partnership and technical visitation to CNPEM (National Energy and Materials Research Center), to LNLS (National Sincrotron Light Laboratory) and to LNBion (National Biosciences Laboratory). The experiment’s video was published on Brazil’s Science, Technology and Innovationministry official page.
Dew Collector – Conceptual experiment of a water-collecting tower inspired by italian’s architect Arturo Vittori project WarkaWater, made with straws and LEGO.
Bionic Hand – Articulated robotic prosthesis experiment made with LEGO and alginate using cutting-edge bionics, molding and prototype ideas.
Thank you!