Brixhibiton

PORTFOLIO

Launceston in Lego photographer Thomas-Liam Ryan

photographer Luke Scott

photographer Ken Draeger

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homas-Liam Ryan is a professional photographer based in Tasmania. His photographs are as much about documenting subjects as they are about building stories, revealing our emotional relationships with the world through the medium of photography. He does a wide range of commercial and creative photography, including portraits, events, weddings and architecture. He can be contacted via www.tryanphotos.com or tryanphotos@gmail.com

en Draeger is a web design and internet marketing specialist (for more information see www.dddesigns.com.au) who loves architecture and Lego. His most ambitious Lego project is a 12 square-metre recreation of Launceston’s civic block. It took 12 months to research and build. It includes 20 of Launceston’s Civic Square buil­dings, with roads and landscaping. It used 250,000 Lego bricks, 800 hours of build time and cost about $35,000. More of Ken Draeger’s Lego creations can be seen at www.brickarchitecture.com.au TA S M A N I A 40ºSouth

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Facade of Launceston Town Hall

On a rainy April morning 150 years ago, the foundation stone for Launceston’s town hall was laid at a ceremony in St John Street.

According to a newspaper report of the day, a large number of people turned out to watch the event, and many shops were closed to mark the occasion.

“The vessels in harbour hoisted their buntings, and flags were hung out from several of the buildings in town,” The Examiner reported.

“The stone was officially laid by Tasmanian Governor Thomas Gore Browne, who told the assembled crowd that the town hall would be a ‘handsome building’ which would ‘add greatly to the beauty of the city’. The stone was laid using a trowel made by a Launceston tradesman and specially engraved for the occasion. Cheers were then given for her Majesty the Queen, for the Governor, for Mrs Gore Browne and the ladies, and for the Mayor, and the proceedings terminated,” the report said.

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Work on the Launceston Town Hall was completed in 1867 and since then the building has been extended and modified several times. A major extension was undertaken in 1936 when five Corin­ thian pillars were added to the original four columns.

The town hall is one of Launceston’s most recognisable buildings, and a ceremony to mark its 150th birthday and an exhibition of the building’s history were held in April.

In the lead-up to the anniversary, one Laun­ ceston man set out on a unique project, taking the town hall as inspiration. Ken Draeger rendered a scale model of the town hall and civic precinct entirely from Lego, using more than 250,000 individual Lego bricks. The 12 square-metre project, which took more than a year of work, was unveiled at the 2014 Brixhibition charity event at the Kings Meadows High School on April 26 and April 27.

We asked brilliant young photographer Thomas-Liam Ryan to photograph it for us.

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Captions?

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