Turn your 3D city data into white bricks, with the parts to buy, step-by-step instructions and a projection layer.
The animation needs 3D graphics, which are off in this browser. Here is the story in pictures and words.
In the change layer, green means built, red means demolished and yellow means modified.
The Legonizer turns a 3D model of a city into a model made of white bricks on square baseplates of 32 × 32 studs. It gives you everything you need to build it: the list of bricks to buy, step-by-step building instructions and a projection layer for your projector.
A physical model brings people around one table. A digital model can show data, change and time. An augmented model combines both: a projector shows urban data on the bricks while a screen shows the 3D city.
Everyone looks at the same model and can point at it. It is easier to talk about a place together.
People walk around the model, lean in and recognise their street, even if they don't read maps.
The projector lights up the white bricks with building uses, green spaces or tram lines, right where they are.
Take it apart and build another district, or the same one at another scale. Building it together is part of the fun.
Use our sample or your own file: 3D Tiles, glTF, OBJ or CityJSON. Everything stays on your computer.
Draw the district you want and see how big it will be on the table before you start.
Get the parts list, step-by-step instructions, shopping lists and the projection layer.
Every brick you need, drawn to scale, with quantities and part numbers.
Plate by plate, layer by layer. Works on a phone at the table.
A map of the plates, a height grid and a diagram for every layer.
Ready to import on BrickLink or Rebrickable.
A top view of your model to line up the projector and draw your own data layers.
The height of every stud (CSV), a 3D model for LDraw tools and a project file to start again later.
Build a district for a public workshop, an exhibition or a neighbourhood project centre.
Make a model of a precise area at a precise scale, with settings you can reproduce.
Learn about your city by building it, starting from a ready-made demo.
Take a district that has changed over the years: towers built near the station, blocks demolished or renovated. Here is how a workshop group can use the Legonizer to talk about it.
The group builds the district from white bricks, one baseplate per team, following the instructions.
The projector shows what each building is used for, the green spaces and the tram lines, right on the bricks.
The screen shows earlier versions of the district. The projector colours the buildings that changed: green for built, red for demolished, yellow for modified.
Pictures and documents appear next to the model. A numeric keypad passes from hand to hand to switch layers and versions.
Build yours.
The Legonizer comes from research on augmented physical models of cities by C. Le Bihan Gautier, J. Delanoy and G. Gesquière, VCity team, LIRIS lab (CNRS, Université de Lyon).
Représentation de l'évolution urbaine à travers une maquette tangible de territoires. Journées Françaises de l'Informatique Graphique (JFIG), Strasbourg, October 2024. hal-04924304.
It extends the Legonizer widget of UD-Viz, the VCity team's open-source framework for urban data.
Demo data: generated by the Legonizer, no real-world data.
The district in the animation is invented, and so are the building uses, green spaces, tram lines, changes and pictures shown on it. The brick model is real output: our own pipeline turned that district into bricks.