Japanese builder DeRa has created some of the most spectacular MOCs of recent years, such as this entrancing LEGO tiger and brick-built Godzilla. But while mecha and monsters have been the builder’s calling card, DeRa’s academic focus as a university student is architecture. For their latest build, DeRa brings an AFOL’s perspective to the iconic Weathercock House from Kobe Japan’s Kitano Ijinkan-gai, a neighborhood where foreign residents created magnificent manors of Western design in the early 20th century.

Sticking to LEGO modular conventions, DeRa builds atop a 32×32 and 16×32 stud plate while allowing between 4-6 studs for sidewalk space. This pushes the build into stylized space, with both exterior and interior designed around minifig scale. But DeRa’s design holds another secret.

Like an ornate puzzle box, this modular slides apart into 12 separate modules!

On their blog, DeRa explains that this is their first time tackling an architectural build since their Shinto shrine project three years ago.

The Weathercock House project is much larger in ambition and required substantial brick orders to achieve. The roof alone contains over 1000 1×1 tiles! It took so many tiles that DeRa couldn’t source enough in brick yellow and had to fill in with some close other shades to avoid ballooning budget costs. The results are amazing, especially the conical tower topped with the weathervane that lends the house its name.

The top story of the house features half-timbered walls, which always pose a fun challenge for builders. DeRa praised the technique used in the latest official modular, Tudor Corner, but for this building wanted to celebrate the texture of the walls, not just the pattern, so rather than flat walls, the timbered sections are offset from the white plaster by the width of a bracet.

For the beautiful wooden balcony windows, DeRa needed a solution for the arched windows that was just 1 brick wide, so instead of arch bricks, they went with flex tubes held together by hidden binoculars behind the beams.

As DeRa explains, the majority of the budget went towards the building’s exterior, so when it was time to decorate inside the house, time and resources were running out. Even if DeRa has a wishlist of things they would have done differently, the furniture designs are still quite impressive. I especially like the ring-shaped table design made from interlocked triangle tiles.

The Weathercock House model is DeRa’s contribution to the JapanBrickFest‘s 10th anniversary collaboration to recreate the city of Kobe in LEGO. We previously featured Pan Noda’s Hilltop House contribution to the event.