BUANASENI

Title: Red & White Mosque with a Black Dome
Medium: Lego
Artist: Johan Ishak and Daniel Ariff
Time/Date: 9:00pm, 30 March 2010
Place of creation: Shah Alam
www.buanaseni.blogspot.com

S I was reading the newspapers, my son came up to me and said "Daddy, can we build a Big Blue Mosque?" (referring to the Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Mosque, the Selangor State Mosque in Shah Alam). My response was "O.K, but it won't be that Big Blue Mosque. Instead, lets build a Red & White Mosque with a Black Dome". He then asked "Why?". Daddy said "Well, we don't have enough blue lego pieces" (Actually, there were plenty of blues for the dome. I was worried about the whites. Not enough white pieces to build the Big Blue Mosque because the Big Blue Mosque is actually a Big White Mosque with a Blue Dome).

So, we built a Red & White Mosque with a Black Dome surrounded by lawns with trees on either side of it and a lake by the front. We were inspired by Masjid Jamek, the oldest mosque in Kuala Lumpur, that was built of red bricks and white concrete and is located by the water front where the Klang and Gombak rivers meet right smack in the heart of Kuala Lumpur; flanked by a serene garden.


I initially thought that Masjid Jamek has black domes - hence my lego work having a black dome. Obviously I got mixed up with the Sultan Abdul Samad Building which has the same Moorish based Indian Mogul architecture with Masjid Jamek.




We present to you our mosque:

Title: Lego Tower II
Medium: Lego
Artist: Johan Ishak and Daniel Ariff
Time/Date: 9:00pm, 28 March 2010
Place of creation: Shah Alam
www.buanaseni.blogspot.com

S a continuation from LEGO TOWER I, we felt inadequate not building a full blown tower as initially intended, ie Petronas Twin Towers. Hence, with the limited lego pieces, we reconstructed a full blown single tower:

Title: Lego Tower I
Medium: Lego
Artist: Johan Ishak and Daniel Ariff
Time/Date: 2:00pm, 28 March 2010
Place of creation: Shah Alam
www.buanaseni.blogspot.com

O build a relationship with your son, you need to build a Lego Tower for him! having Petronas Twin Towers in mind, Daniel and I embarked on another saga of skillful architectural journey. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough lego pieces to achieve 2 towers. It ended up being a single tower with 2 legs:











We later decided to break this work and reconstructed a full blown tower, LEGO TOWER II

Title: Masonic Lego Structure II
Medium: Lego
Artist: Johan Ishak and Daniel Ariff
Time/Date: 4:00pm, 20 March 2010
Place of creation: Shah Alam
www.buanaseni.blogspot.com

Y previous blog on similar art work, MASONIC LEGO STRUCTURE, was an attempt to build a Masonic temple and lodge. After reading a couple of books on Freemasons, the famous one being The Lost Symbol, it appears that a Pyramid with the All Seeing Eye at the top is a significant icon for the fraternity.

So, this weekend, me and my boy embarked on another architectural saga of building a Pyramid, with an All Seeing Eye at the top. You'd have thought that this should be simple given the perfect right angles and symmetrical structure in step-like erection - a no brainer. Far from the truth really. As we were building it, brick by brick of legos, it crumbles because completing the middle and the top portion forces the pressure to collapse the pyramid into the hollow inner space.

So the remedy was: Build from the top to bottom with reinforcement beams strategically placed across the hollow inner space at multiple levels of the Pyramid as and when we progress downwards towards the base. You'd probably say "Why not just fill up the hollow inner space with solid lego?" Well, the answer is, we don't have that many lego pieces - thanks to my son who seems to have his lego pieces everywhere in the house - also because legos are quite expensive. Hence, we had to resort to our basic instinct of architectural and engineering skills.

I present to you, the Masonic Lego Stucture II: