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 festive revamp for Turtle Tower in Hanoi

Turtle Tower sits upon an island on Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the historical centre of Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. This temple is a famous landmark in Hanoi and has been built in LEGO by Vietnamese builder Hoang H Dang. Given the time of year, some festive artistic license has been applied and the tower is now giving off some serious ‘Gingerbread House’ vibes. The actual architectural features of the temple have been nicely captured, especially the decorative stonework on the roof. The gingerbread decoration is cute with candy canes, a nice colour selection of ‘candy’, and Santa rowing over the island to deliver some gifts.

Hoang Dang tells us that the lake was actually home to a very rare species of turtle which is now close to extinction. The last turtle that used to live in the lake sadly passed away this year leaving his cousins as the only two left on Earth, hence the small turtle on the left of the build.

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Fountain Place in Dallas, Texas, in LEGO microscale

Just in time for BrickUniverse in Dallas, Texas this weekend, Rocco Buttliere presents a microscale replica of Fountain Place near the convention. The building is a refreshing sight among surrounding rectangular structures with its interesting angles all around, and Rocco nails it with LEGO bricks.

See more shots of Rocco’s detailed model on Flickr.

Have a prawn or a prayer with these Chinese-style builds

Indonesian builder Anton Budiono‘s latest two builds are both Chinese-style creations in the shape of a seafood restaurant and temple, presumably for quiet postprandial contemplation. Both builds utilise the addition of the same bridge over to a smaller shrine that rests upon wooden decking. There are many details to admire in these builds but the roofs with their decorative ridges and fascia are a particular favourite of mine. There are so many nice little touches to be discovered, such as the telephone handsets forming the beams within the large red front doors or the Mixel ball joints used as structural decorations across the façade.

The seafood restaurant cleverly uses the dark red octopus as decoration in one corner of the building, but Anton’s brick built lobster on the first floor corner is even better and worth a closer look!

While the temple is a little more demure in colour, it also benefits from lots of nice details such as the cascading water feature on the left-hand side or the use of black palm tree tops as the lanterns at the front. There’s more to see around the back on Anton’s Flickr album.

Court of the Lions

There are many beautiful places in the world, and it’s always a delight to see one well executed in LEGO. pérula‘s Patio de los Leones certainly falls into that category. I like the composition of the photo; the central fountain the plaza is quite recognizable. The micro-scale lion sculptures are excellent, especially considering their size!

Massive LEGO sales & deals for Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2016 [News]

Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop have a number of “Brick Friday” and Cyber Monday deals from now through the 28th. Starting at midnight Eastern at the LEGO Shop online, shipping is free regardless of order size, and orders over $99 USD / £60 qualify for a free 40223 Snowglobe.

A number of exclusive and hard-to-find sets are 20% off from the LEGO Shop as well — we’ll update this post with the specific sets once we see what’s actually available on the 25th. And scroll down for links to the LEGO Shop sales & deals for our UK and Canadian readers.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com is already having a huge LEGO sale, with sets as much as 44% off.

LEGO Star Wars sets on sale at Amazon

The fantastic LEGO Star Wars set 75150 Vader’s TIE Advanced vs. A-Wing Starfighter (read our review) is 37% or $33.20 off, at only $56.79.

See more LEGO Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales & deals

LEGO Architecture 21034 London city skyline [Review]

LEGO’s city skylines series continues with LEGO Architecture set 21034 London, one of 3 new city skylines announced yesterday. Released at the grand opening of the new London flagship LEGO store in Leicester Square today, this set captures 5 iconic landmarks from Great Britain’s capital city and is exclusive to the new London store until wider release in Jan 2017. London skyline retails at £44.99, contains 468 parts and features the National Gallery, Nelson’s Column, Big Ben, the London Eye and Tower Bridge.

I was intrigued to know which iconic landmarks would be chosen as London is a city full of grand architecture, iconic buildings and landmarks. Indeed LEGO have already captured Buckingham Palace, Big Ben (twice) and a London Bus across the Architecture and Creator series. The 5 chosen landmarks are all well known and perhaps more historical than other potential buildings such as the Shard or the Gherkin.

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3 new city skylines grace the LEGO Architecture theme for 2017 [News]

LEGO is adding 3 more cities to its popular skylines branch of the Architecture theme. This time around we’ll get the iconic structures of Sydney, Chicago, and London. These will nicely complement last year’s New York City skyline, which we reviewed, as well as the Berlin and Venice skyline sets (all 3 of which are on sale for 25-30% off on Amazon). We’re pleased to say that we’ve got a hands-on review of the London Skyline set for you, so you won’t have to wait to see more.

21032 Sydney, 361 pieces

Check out more brand new sets:
2017 LEGO City sets
2017 LEGO Nexo Knights sets
2017 LEGO Technic sets
LEGO Technic BMW R 1200 GS set
2017 LEGO Friends sets
2017 LEGO Creator sets, part 1
2017 LEGO Creator sets, part 2
2017 LEGO Ninjago sets
2017 LEGO Batman Movie sets

Click to see the other new skyline sets

Living in a house of bricks

We’ve previously featured Terez trz‘s ongoing project of creating a LEGO version of their own home. Now we have more images to pore over — a wonderful sitting area.

Whilst the building is cool, once again it’s the quality of Terez’s photography which elevates the models out of the ordinary. The images wouldn’t look out of place in a fancy interiors catalog. Whilst the diorama doesn’t feature any people, I think it avoids sterility with the sense of lived-in clutter created by touches like the pile of mail by the door and the organic messiness of the pot plants.

A bike shop perfect for a modular building layout

Minifigs residing in a city of LEGO modular buildings can purchase and repair their bicycles at this custom modular bike shop built by Łukasz Libuszewski. Interesting colors and unusual use of elements define the series as much as the modular standard, and there is no shortage of this throughout the build.

Łukasz added an elevator to his bike shop modular, and looking in the center column with gear racks on either side and a janitor standing slightly elevated, it appears to be functional.

View more shots of Łukasz’s building on Flickr.

Paris skyline in microscale

Cecilie Fritzvold has once again been inspired to create a microscale city skyline in the style of the skyline sets within the LEGO Architecture theme. LEGO released 21028 New York City, 21027 Berlin and 21026 Venice as part of a trio of new city skyline sets earlier this year. Cecilie has chosen the beautiful French capital, Paris, a city full of impressive architecture and grandiose buildings. Cecile’s build includes (from left to right) Arc de Triomphe, Tour Eiffel, Dômes des Invalides, Notre-Dame, and Colonne de Juillet (Place de la Bastille). The small strips of transparent blue on each side represent the River Seine.

Notre-Dame is my own favourite in this build — I think that the combination of ingenious parts use and the textured stonework for such a small build are fantastic. If you like this type of build, you will also enjoy Cecilie’s Tokyo skyline build that we blogged a couple of months ago and Michael Jasper’s microscale model of Dortmund.

A handy way to build the Eiffel Tower

The official LEGO Eiffel Tower 10181 set is one of the largest sets released, with 3428 parts. For those with less room for such a monster set or fewer pennies to afford such a sizeable price-tag, have a look at LegoJale‘s latest creation, which users a single part depicting the Eiffel Tower: A minifig hand. This microscale build manages to capture the essence of the Eiffel Tower, the skyline in the background, and the fountains in the foreground (as per the image that the build is based upon) with just a handful of parts.

The set-up for this shot shows how distancing parts of the build can give a very good foreground and background feel to the final shot without requiring any scaling. I always enjoy seeing set-up shots and this one is great because there is no fancy equipment — just LEGO, a book, and a camera.

Come warm yourself by the LEGO fire

It’s a bit to early for roasting chestnuts, though I suppose you could go for roasting pumpkin seeds near the fire. Heikki Mattila has given us this glorious little fireplace, complete with a stand for wood and kindling. The fireplace itself is lit with LEDs, which adds a very nice touch to the presentation. I particularly like the spindly tree off to the left, though I daresay it looks like it should be a bit further away from the heat source.