Ideas Research Institute revealed

Alatariel Elensar, the creator of the forthcoming eighth Lego Ideas set, 21110 Research Institute, has posted an advanced review of the set, revealing its final form to the world.

The original proposal

The original proposal for this set was a "Female Minifigure Set", Elensar proposed numerous vignettes demonstrating females in all sorts of roles, to help balance out the persistent inequality in the Lego world. As the proposal neared the ten thousand supporter mark it had to be narrowed down to a small selection; three of the more science based roles were chosen, hence the final set is a multi-disciplinary research institute.

The final set has stayed remarkably close to the original vignette designs, with just a few minor refinements to polish them off. We get a palaeontologist with a fossilised T-Rex to study, an astronomer with a big telescope, and a chemist with her lab.

You can see more photos, and Elensar's thoughts on the final set, in her review.

While not their main focus, Lego does quite a good job of representing science in at least some forms, be that astronauts or exotic expeditions. Plus of course many of the previous Ideas/Cuusoo sets have been inspired by real world scientific devices. The closest comparison I can think of to this lab environment is one of the first Friends sets (and one of the least stereotypical roles for the Friends girls), 3933 Olivia's Invention Workshop. While that was a nice little set, I'm very happy to have a female scientist (or indeed several) that doesn't have to live in a pink world!