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.

New LEGO sets for June 2024 now available for purchase [News]

Summer is upon us, and what better way to spend time cooling off than by building a LEGO set in the comfort of your home? This month, we see a continued resurgence of the much-loved Icons theme with the release of The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr and some highly anticipated new dinosaur molds from the Jurassic World theme like 76966 Dinosaur Missions: Allosaurus Transport Truck. Let’s take a look at some highlights releasing this month. For the best view of everything available, both old and new, be sure to visit the LEGO website (LEGO US | LEGO CAN | LEGO UK).

Continue to the highlights releasing this month!

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United24 launches five new custom LEGO models of Ukrainian landmarks to support reconstruction in Ukraine [News]

Last November, the first wave of #LEGOwithUkraine custom sets raised 15,000,000 UAH (nearly USD $375,000) for reconstruction in Ukraine, helping to rebuild a country ravaged for more than two years now by Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion. The official United24 charity recently launched a new wave of five sets designed by LEGO builders from all over the world, titled #UKRAINEinLEGOBricks.

The five models are based on landmarks all over Ukraine, from Lviv in the west, the capital Kyiv in central Ukraine, and Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Crimea in the south on the Black Sea. The first wave of custom kits was designed by LEGO builders exclusivley from Ukraine, while this next group proves how much support the Ukrainian people have from all of us around the world — the builders represent the US, Germany, Poland, and of course Ukraine itself.

See all the custom LEGO models you can win by donating for Ukrainian reconstruction

Micro Barad-Dûr menaces a tiny middle earth!

If the price tag on the newly announced Lord of the Rings Barad-Dûr LEGO set is making your wallet feel like Viggo Mortensen’s toe, you should check out this micro-scale tower by Joe! From this mini monument to malevolent majesty, you can keep an eye on the hobbits with the DREAMZzz eye tile. With just a few pieces, Joe has captured the evil essence of the dark tower. The two outer towers are captured by a hilt and a plate with a bar, while all the spiky decorative business is made out of a few grills and a gear. I do wonder if Sauron will need a microscope to find the one ring at this scale!

History is made in the abstract

At LEGO street level, a tense scene plays out. Orders from the General. It’s time for Major Brickleton to finish up his puddings and bid adieu to the modernist comforts of Seawatch’s beloved Mondrie Inn. The colonel raises his gaze to look upon the half-timbered rooms, blocked in primary colors in the Dutch style. “War is all well and good in the abstract,” he thought, “but I’d rather stick to my puddings.” Evan Crouch is no stranger at progressive builds that fuse history and whimsy, but his latest scene might be his most modern(ist) creation yet from (neo)plastic bricks. I wonder what came first, the delightful play on the name of artist Piet Mondrian for the Mondrie Inn, or the visual pun of fusing half-timbered architecture with Mondrian’s trademark blocks of primary colors? Evan backs the whimsical concept with exceptional technique.

The inn’s ground floor uses a mix of masonry bricks, round plates and SNOT bricks for a nice weathered effect, while dark grey ingots make for effective cobblestones. The color blocking for the upper stories is minimialist in approach, appropriate for the inspiration, with no windows and just a few round tiles to show wear. Evan rounds out the build with a custom sticker for the inn’s signboard and historical characters.

Bridging the Gap

Lego castle builds always seem to tell a story at just one glance, or perhaps it’s simply my overactive imagination. Lego builder Taylor has titled this one “Unexpected Visitors”, giving us a starting point to envision the scenario presented here. Is the visitor the king and his personal guard? Or do we see a herald on an important mission delivering a message? The bridge in this scene could tell a story on its own, but the inclusion of the minifigures deepens that narrative to another level. The façade of the bridge conveys both its age and strength while the rockwork and plants create the impression of the bridge connecting two mountains. What do you see? The start of a battle? The start of an alliance between factions?

A Traveler’s Tribute to the Golden Temple

Seeing the talent and imagination displayed in models from world-class builders can be a major inspiration for LEGO fans, but where do those builders find their spark? For Danish AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) Lasse Vestergård, two enduring sources of inspiration are travel and faith. Lasse’s latest creation is a stunning model of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site in Sikhism and an architectural marvel. The original building, the sacred pool surrounding it, and the holy texts within date back to the 16th century. Shifting empires and religious conflicts led to multiple waves of destruction and rebuilding, but the site’s significance and grandeur have endured, attracting both pilgrims and world travelers like Lasse. While he was inspired to recreate the temple after a visit in 2019, it took years before Lasse could find enough gold bricks to make that dream a reality. There looks to be nearly 200 golden bananas alone (I guess that qualifies it as a house of worSHIP).

Lasse’s rendition isn’t just noteworthy in its scale, but for its ingenious detail while working within the constraints of white and gold elements. The white flower motif around the side entrances is especially effective. I also very much appreciate seeing so many turbans being used to celebrate a culture not often represented in LEGO.

The Golden Temple is the second holy site from Lasse’s travels to be highlighted on this site, as we were also moved by his LEGO model of the Mir-i-Arab Madrasah in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Lasse’s galleries feature many more temples and churches from the ancient and modern world and his native Denmark that are definitely worth a look.

Two new iconic LEGO sets announced, based on a pair of well-known European wonders [News]

LEGO has been inspired by the art in Paris, France with a duo of new LEGO Icons sets bound for release this year. From its home in the Louvre’s Salle des États, the Mona Lisa is by far the most well-known painting in the world, soon to be remade in brick and plate. LEGO Art 31213 Mona Lisa will be a little over 1:2 scale, coming in at 43 x 11.5 in (or 43 x 30 cm) and is comprised of 1,503 pieces. Moving over to the world of architecture, LEGO Architecture 21061 Notre-Dame de Paris is perhaps the best known cathedral in the world, its namesake standing tall since 1260. The LEGO version will still sit at an impressive 13 in tall (33 cm), with a removable roof and detailed interior. These popular Parisian LEGO productions will go on sale at the start of October and June, respectively. More details and pics of these new sets are below!

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Creative adobe suites in LEGO

The stacked adobe houses of Taos Pueblo are an architectural wonder whose living history goes back a thousand years. Brothers Brick alum Nannan Zhang takes inspiration from Taos for his breathtaking model The Enchanted Pueblo. While the pastel colors are much more vibrant the the walls of Taos Pueblo, they absoultely reflect the palette of a desert sunset and art of the region. The offset houses with their rounded roofs and exposed viga beams are unmistakeably pueblo, but serindipitously echo the architecture of LEGO House in Billund. There are so many lovely details with brilliant parts use, from the strings of dried chilis that hang by the doors, to the custom red soil base, to the incredible array of desert succulents (love that flowering yucca on the left!). If, like me, you’re wondering where those curvy pots that fit so well on the terraces come from, they’re sourced from old Scala flower pots. Nannan estimates the build took 60 hours over 2 months to achieve, but the results are truly timeless.

A fantastic build in more ways than one

My favorite LEGO set of last year (and possibly of all time) is the LEGO Lord of the Rings 10316 Rivendell set. I could wax verbose about that set, but I don’t have to — because everything I loved about Rivendell is back here in this piece, which builder Martin Gebert calls “Rivendell-inspired.” You can certainly see the official set’s influence — the organic blending of nature and masonry, the pastel greens and whites, the otherworldly architecture. And yet this build manages to take the fantasy even further — look at that lovely hanging fountain and the perfectly irregular smoothness of that outcropping. Best of all, this model (entitled “The Arrival of an Old Friend”) is just chapter 1 in a series, so be sure to follow Martin and keep exploring this incredible slice of a fantasy world.

A gilded chapel for repentant pirates

The LEGO Pirates theme might not have the range of sets that we’ve seen in City, Space, and Castle, but for many AFOLs, the Pirates flame still burns as bright as Captain Redbeard’s chin whiskers. For several years now, builder Marcin Dski (Sleepless Night) has been expanding on an original series of dockside modular buildings that bring to life the Golden Age of Piracy in stunning detail, and their latest addition is this majestic chapel. The façade features some attractive use of gold elements for detail work, but my favorite section has to be the powder dome, ribbed with flex tubes and cupola. Sleepless Night’s modular pirate journey started with a re-imagining of their favorite classic set, Lagoon Lock-Up. From there, they added Captain Redbeard’s mansion and a custom house, and now this lovely chapel to tempt freebooters with its golden façade. Here at TBB we are excited to see what other historic additions Sleepless Nights adds to this bootyful tableau.

Our princess is in this castle, Mario!

We’ve seen some amazing LEGO microscale builds this month thanks to the Marchitecture contest. Matthias Bartsch jumps into the game with a delightful and instantly recognizable recreation of Peach’s Castle from Super Mario 64. A version of the castle appears in the official Super Mario 64 Question Block set, but Matthias’ take greatly expands on the homage with gorgeous landscaping, a larger interior and careful fidelity to the beloved in-game design. Mathias leverages the printed tiles from the official LEGO set but finds clever solutions of his own for details like the micro warp pipe, here represented with a technic pin, and poofy trees made from ice cream toppers.

The roof lifts off to reveal the castle’s interior, with a tiled floor and tiny staircase.

Architectural grandeur infused into a Great Ball Contraption

Another impressive creation from TBB regular Andreas Lenander, this LEGO build of what appears to be an aqueduct offers more depth than its striking foliage and eye-catching architectural design might suggest at first glance. This build marks Andreas’ debut in the realm of Great Ball Contraptions, a term commonly abbreviated “GBC” in LEGO enthusiast circles.

In this GBC module, the LEGO ball follows a pathway mimicking the flow of water from start to finish. Be sure to check out the video below of this GBC module in action, and explore some of the other LEGO Great Ball Contraption models that have been featured here on TBB.

Check out the model in action as well.