Team Valley micro-scale

This LEGO commission was a real challenge! My first foray into micro-scale, it depicts the Team Valley Trading Estate in Gateshead. The Estate dates from the 1930s and was one of the first of its kind. It is now home to over 700 firms and 20,000 employees. The age of the huge site (3 km long) means that there is a wide range of architectural styles, and mature trees spread throughout.

Owned by UK Land Estates, who are based on the site, they commissioned a model of the whole site in 2016. Some of the properties are represented by just a few LEGO pieces, or just one in some cases. At such a scale, accuracy of representation lifts from the individual building to the overall layout of road and built areas. This was luckily fairly straight forward in places due to the ordered layout of the roads in a grid pattern.

As with most of my projects I have used LED lighting, which runs under the buildings and lights up individual sites. The model is now on display in the reception of UKLE.