Tag Archives: Architecture

LEGO provides the perfect medium for recreating the buildings and landmarks of the world — LEGO has even released a line of official LEGO Architecture sets. Check out our coverage of the official sets, and don’t miss all the gorgeous architectural models created by LEGO fans from around the world.

A place of inspiration for knowledge, culture, and innovation

Beyond the books, libraries provide a place for community building and collaboration. Builder Ben Vijle saught to commemorate ‘De Krook‘ city library in Ghent, Belgium with this 1:500 scale model. This architectural beauty uses brown grille plates to mimic the steel beam facade that stands out on the river bend. The stacked levels provide a home for the businesses and organizations which collaborated for the library initiative. Ben uses sideways building techniques to achieve the thin profile of each level without any unnecessary gaps. The builder certainly had an eye for detail when modeling this relatively recent addition to the city.

As you can see, this microscale build features the river, nearby roadway, and the various levels of greenspace integrated into the riverbanks by the library. The brown grilles continue beyond the building structure to the bike path and footbridge. A red blade, bone, and needle hidden in the walkway peak out as Ben’s version of the sculpture of a man and woman by De Krook’s entrance. The printed 1×1 crosswalk tiles from the LEGO Architecture Tokyo set and the clips as bike racks by the road are also simple but awesome little details.

Don’t miss Ben’s lovely microscale renditions of other Belgian landmarks: Ben Vilje LEGO on TBB

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On a trip to Southern Europe without the hassle of traveling

What do you do when you can’t go on your trip to Southern Europe? Right, you just build a mini version of it! Andrew Tate made this lovely LEGO town square with a combination of different European style buildings. The build features a restaurant, a clothing shop, and lots of apartments above the shop and the restaurant.

There are a lot of nice details added to the buildings. One of my favorite elements is the fluted profile brick being used in brown as shutter and in tan as pleated blinds. The 1×1 tiles on the blue building do a great job representing tiles. The sand green building has windows adorned with loaf slopes. One of the things that really make this creation a lot of fun is the number of levels it has and the activity that is going on on each level. Your eyes can scan the picture multiple times and every single time you’ll notice something new. I can already imagine myself sitting on that lovely city bench underneath the blooming gazebo enjoying the busy city life in front of me.

Nature reclaims elven architecture... As it should!

Elves seem to have a knack of building their dwellings harmonious with nature in most fantasy stories. Whether it is an ethereal treetop palace or a hidden valley lodging (very specific, I know), elven architecture is one with its surroundings. Books and films such as The Lord of the Rings made this trope popular – which isn’t a bad thing. However, builder Daniel Cloward shows us that sometimes this is not the case.

An elven city sits on coastal cliffs, built from the same stones, as shown by light grey LEGO elements. However, it is abandoned and has been overgrown with trees, shrubs, and other vegetation depicted by various green pieces. Only the white tree with lavender foliage remains of the original elf-nature harmony, as it seems to be part of the original city. The bright colours of that tree stand out from the grey and greens of the rest of the build. This small diorama really shows off the story of nature vs man-made (or elf-made) structures falling to ruin.

Interested in more elves and their architecture? We have some more elven creations for you.

Recreating the Rubensstrasse with LEGO

Anyone who has ever been in the process of remodelling a house has experienced the point where you just want it to be finished. For my home renovation, that moment came about one month ago. Although we are nowhere near finished, seeing this awesome LEGO creation by Aukbricks makes me look forward to having a finished home myself. Don’t let this sleek design fool you, as this creation is made on quite a large scale. Each floor is about 11 bricks high. For reference, the lamp post element used for the street lights is 7 bricks high, which is quite tall for a LEGO piece. But here it looks quite tiny compared to this wonderful build. Aukbricks has such an amazing eye for details, with every house having its own garden, curtains and plants in the windowsill. The design is based on the Rubensstrasse 11 to 19 in Düsseldorf, Germany, which gives you all the opportunity to look these buildings up online just to see what an amazing job Aukbricks did on representing them in the brick.

Send my mail to Stormhaven

In the tiny settlement of Stormhaven, there is a post office built on platforms that raise above mangrove flats on wooden stilts. It’s like the opening line to a really great pirate novel, isn’t it? That is the kind of adventure Ayrlego has in store for us with this charming LEGO creation. He alludes that there has been a pirate raid last year but you wouldn’t know it as the denizens here seem quite at peace. I love the textures of the roof and siding. The raised docks and aforementioned mangrove trees are both excellent touches. I want to live in this world for a little while, even if just to collect my mail at this amazing little post office. Fanciful historical architecture and incidentally more than a few post offices seems to be Ayrlego’s thing. Settle in to see what I mean in our archives.

Three (thousand) bricks in the fountain, each one seeking happiness

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is one of the Eternal City’s most famous landmarks—a stunning piece of architectural theatre, usually swamped by hordes of tourists tossing coins into the water as they follow the advice of the Sinatra song. Luca Petraglia‘s excellent LEGO creation depicts the fountain without its attendant crowds, meaning everyone can get a decent view of the beauty on display. A 1.5m wide brick-built version of the Palazzo Poli offers a dramatic architectural backdrop to the fountain itself, its triumphal arch framing the central statue of Oceanus. I love the simplicity of the colour choices in this model, ensuring the trans-blue waters of the fountain really pop against the stark backdrop. Luca says the statues themselves were designed by fellow builder Eero Okkonen—it’s nice to see his character builds given such an impressive setting.

Massive LEGO Taj Mahal goes above and beyond the official sets

The Taj Mahal, the world-famous mausoleum built by Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan, has seen three official LEGO versions — one in 2008, re-released in 2017, with a new Taj Mahal set unveiled in 2021. Although the newest set is smaller, the original and its re-release are famous for being amongst the largest LEGO sets ever produced. So it should give some idea of the complexity and scale of Rocco Buttliere‘s latest architectural creation when you understand the piece count of around 17.5k parts is considerably higher than all 3 of the official sets combined. Rocco is no stranger to being featured on The Brothers Brick, being an undisputed master of microscale LEGO building. However, this model is something special, depicting not just the famous mausoleum building itself, but also the surrounding gardens and compound.

Click to see more pictures of this stunning model

I’ve been to Venice but it never looked this calm

I visited the city of Venice once and I have to admit, there will always be a special place in my heart for that city. It has it all; beautiful architecture, the docks, the bridges over the canals, romantic restaurants serving great food, and last but not least loads of tourists. At some point during my visit, it was hard to see the beauty of the city because there were so many of them/us.
Legooderso provides help for this ‘problem’ by creating the city of Venice in LEGO. They managed to capture all the key elements of the city minus the tourists. The amount of detail on this build is just amazing. A lot of unconventional parts get used as architectural details. We can discover mudguards, cattle horns and candles. Also the little niche with the chicken statue is a very nice detail. I’m not sure if I ever came across a real chicken shrine in Venice but who knows, I might have missed it due to all the tourists.

This glorious microscale build portrays some famous Belgian landmarks

LEGO builder Ben Vijle has designed this incredible microscale cross-section of an area in the city of Ghent, Belgium. The model features the Belfort tower, the Stadshal canopy building and an assortment of shops. The structures are placed on a square stand with textured brick pieces representing roads and pavements while providing the implication of cobbled streets. The most prominent section of the diorama has to be the Belfort tower. The tower has an intricate appearance, thanks to the variety of tile pieces featured in the structure and printed round tiles from the Ninjago sets that serve as clock faces.

The adjoining structure to the tower was originally used as a hall to sell cloth. Claw pieces represent arched windows and adds to the building’s grandeur. Next to the cloth hall there are a variety of unique looking shops. An interesting selection of pieces are used along the street; one of the shops has an ice cream cone piece as its roof while another uses hockey sticks to create columns. Looks like there is even a sushi restaurant along the way if you get hungry.

The other landmark of this build is the Stadshal, which has a triangular design and is presented in brown. The building is used to host markets and concerts and overlooks a small park which has some nice details such as the angled grill pieces used as steps. Across from the Stadshal, there are a few more buildings; one of structures even uses handcuffs to create some of the upper details of its roof.

This is a professional-looking build and would make for a fantastic microscale set. The attention to detail and the interesting variation between the buildings make this an outstanding city scene.

Check out more of our articles on microscale LEGO builds.

Historic Linderei train station at 1:45 scale

Trains remain one of the strongest fandoms out there, bringing tons of people together in the LEGO community. Intent on expanding and upgrading, fans of LEGO trains spend hours and weeks building models such as this for their displays. The efforts often pay off, resulting in beautiful reproductions of real-life landmarks. This model of Linderei Station from 1912 was built by Pieter Post to go along with another builder’s works for a larger display. The beauty of LEGO train builders is they can literally connect their worlds together.

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A modern-day Great Wonder recreated in 9,000 LEGO bricks

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt is a contemporary complex of museums and archives, a planetarium, and of course, a library. This modern tribute to the Great Library of antiquity has been recreated from over 9,000 LEGO bricks by that master of microscale LEGO architecture Rocco Buttliere. Measuring nearly 2′ square, the model took around 60 hours to design, and 30 more to build. All Rocco’s effort was definitely worthwhile, as this creation captures the complex shapes of its inspiration perfectly. And it’s not just the central subject which provides a showcase of building skill — don’t miss the beautiful sweeping curve of that seafront road.

As with all of Rocco’s amazing LEGO microscale models it’s worth zooming in for a closer look at the detailing and depth of texture he manages to cram into a tight footprint. I spy some printed window panels from Dr Who’s Tardis deployed as solar panels…

Microscale metropolis is a masterpiece in minimalism

A great LEGO model is not just about building techniques or choosing the perfect part. Lighting and composition are equally important. And sometimes the unexpected little things make the biggest impact. In this skyline by Geneva Durand which is made up of a collection of mostly distinct individual elements, along with just a few small builds, the lighting is one of the best parts, as it fills the city with a sort of golden hour vibe.

I do want to give props for a few very nice parts usages. First, the bridge is made up of ice 2 axes clasped in the middle by a single Minifig hand. A roller skate perfectly fits a brick at the top and a tile at the bottom on the left edge. and right next to that is a large tooth/claw element that reminds me of that famous London skyscraper, The Shard. But my favorite part by far is the vintage sci-fi ray gun.