Hammond — The Columbia Theater recently showcased a battleship, a fighter plane, two stealth aircraft and two spaceships. These are all his 15-year-old Noah Maggio creations.
Noah, an avid Lego builder and son of Lorenger’s TJ and Lisa Maggio, showed off his creations earlier this month when the theater hosted its annual Star Wars Day event. displayed a selection.
While Noah’s exhibits included Star Wars vehicles and characters, his conversation piece was a custom-built naval battleship that didn’t require instructions.
As the audience gathers around his table, Noah reveals that he has a lot to offer, including anchors, cannons, cranes that can withstand up to two pounds, living quarters for the ship’s crew, and secret compartments with no outside hints. demonstrated the movable and detachable parts of the work. The location is on the hull.
The battleship started as a three-story cruise ship model set with 32 rooms, a bar, dining hall, theater, dance hall, storage chimney and captain’s quarters, which Noah completed in about six hours.
Then he decided to change it.
“It was big. After seeing the new movie” Battleship “I thought” Let’s build a battleship “,” said Noah, fine-tuning this ship that became a battleship from a cruise ship He added that he worked on customization for over a year. “I wanted to get it done and get the part right. And I decided to continue that with the other builds.”
Noah laughs and guesses 11 years, trying to remember how long he’s been a Lego builder.
“I don’t really know,” he said. “It was so long ago.”
Just a few years into his hobby, at the age of 7, Noah began making his own custom builds instead of packaged sets with instructions. “As time went on, I became more creative,” he explained.
“He was creative by nature and it felt like one of the easiest things to present in front of him,” said his father, TJ.
“We really wanted to have the principle of getting the project done,” said his mother, Lisa. “A lot of it is her 1,000 steps at most, and there’s just one tiny meticulous step, and one wrong step and it ends up going badly.”
Custom builds like battleships often require trial and error.
In order to make the section easier to remove to expose the bridge, Noah explains how a part of the base of that section is equipped with a smooth plate so that other bricks are not stripped when the roof is removed. I pointed out what I did.
He found ways to adjust and balance cannons and cranes that were too heavy to stand on.
“We saw Noah get really creative and start building his own structures,” said Lisa. “It’s problem solving. You’re solving a problem on a small scale, but you’re also saying, ‘If you put this here, you know what works better.’ .”
She added that the type of problem-solving he displays in buildings rivals the skills of an engineer or architect.
“The more he cares about structural integrity, the more he’ll have to find a way to do it,” said TJ.
“To avoid that,” Noah said.
“Find ways to get stronger and support your weight,” said TJ.
TJ provided a custom-made Star Wars piece for the exhibit, and Noah surrounded it with Lego characters posed in ways that gave it quirkiness and personality.
Noah showed a Star Destroyer that he built using a manual, but no pre-packaged bricks. Instead, he used spare parts to complete the project and enhanced it by opening half the ship to reveal the interior.
Lisa cited a TED talk with Sir Ken Robinson in which he said creativity is as important as literacy in early childhood education.
“You know how important literacy is, right?” said Lisa. “We haven’t valued creativity in our education system for years, but[Robinson]says that’s exactly what our economy needs right now.
“So, if you do, Lego will do it for you.”