My Space: Andrew Battley

Chemical sciences PhD candidate Andrew Battley’s love of Lego began when he was a toddler and took him all the way to the finals of the second series of Lego Masters New Zealand. Lego still helps him unwind from study pressure – and brightens the City Campus office he shares with colleagues. “I’ve always liked to have things that I love around me,” he says, “and the main vessel for that is Lego bricks.”

When did you begin playing with Lego?

I must have been about three. The first set we have, which I suspect my parents bought for themselves rather than my brother and I, was a model of a passenger ferry that they went on in Sweden. We still have it on the shelf at home.

How did you evolve from building Lego sets to making your own creations?

It just comes from play. When we were children, we weren’t thinking, ‘Oh, we’re designing something.’ It was just, ‘We’ve got these pieces from the set. Let’s throw them together and make a story.’ It was a way to play out stories with characters and it grew from there.

How much Lego do you own?

A lot. Most of it is in my parents’ basement. It was built up through buying sets when we were children, and in recent years, I’ve started buying individual parts. I’m also part of the Auckland Lego User Group, and together we sometimes buy bulk parts.

You’re doing a PhD. How does Lego fit into your academic life?

It’s mostly a source of relaxation – a way to step away from the studies. But sometimes I go too far in that direction – like taking months off to go on a TV show!

How did the opportunity arise to compete on Lego Masters New Zealand?

I was at a birthday celebration for one of my friends and we’d noticed that TVNZ was calling for people to go on Lego Masters. We both love Lego and we joked about going on the show, then the next day we messaged and said ‘Should we just go for it?’ We didn’t think we were really at that level, but we thought we may as well try.

There was an application process, where you sent in photos of your work. At the time I was working on a massive Hogwarts Castle, because I’d always liked Harry Potter, trying to make something that captured the stories from my imagination. Then there was an audition process that involved a mini challenge. My build partner and I ended up auditioning alongside another team that made it to the final, so it was cool to go through that full journey together.

What are some of the models you have in your space?

They fluctuate. The floating islands are a relatively recent addition. It’s a model that embodies my design process. I had no plans to make it; I just started putting pieces together and seeing how they looked. I describe it as my style of ‘vibes-based building’.

In contrast, there’s my Auckland Museum model, which I built last year for the Auckland Brick Show – an annual convention where people who love Lego come together and show the things they’ve built. The organisers wanted a set to sell at the show that everyone would recognise as being from Auckland. I took inspiration from the shape of the museum and tried to model it as accurately as possible. People who went along to the event could buy one of these sets and have it on the shelf at home.

And then there’s a little model that I built of me in my chemistry lab, complete with its own rotary evaporator.

Caitlin Sykes