LEGO’s Sydney Opera House was released in 2013, but now LEGO has finally announced their next Creator Expert model of a famous piece of architecture, that grand icon of England, 10253 Big Ben. It will retail for $249.99 USD, and will be available beginning July 1, just in time for Big Ben’s 137th birthday.
Click to read the full press release
Rick Bewier has built a fantastic LEGO brewery scene, complete with an old-school dray lorry picking up its next delivery. The truck itself is a nice little model, but what makes the scene for me is the excellent use of color in the building itself, and things like the sliding warehouse doors and the lights.
I work for a brewery “in real life” and so I appreciated the other touches Patrick has added. The roof is obviously pretty cool, but what I particularly liked was the chimney — a spot-on detail for a compelling recreation of a classic redbrick Victorian-era brewery.
The Master Chef himself, known to most as Simply Bricking It, has been on a roll lately, creating awesome build after awesome build. His disheveled desert scene is quite eye-catching and utilizes some uncommon LEGO pieces and colors. The scene immediately made me think of the builder’s “Blacktronalds” build (that helped him earn the title of Master Chef) as both feature dual-pillared, tan-colored structures with splashes of rare LEGO colors in the same unique style.
Airport has been one of the coolest subthemes of LEGO Town sets since the 90s. But while planes have become bigger and better, airport buildings have become more crowded and basic. Andrew Tate rectifies the situation with an outstanding luxury lounge right from the 1950s.
Sharp lines and plain colors are the most memorable features of architecture from that golden age of flight, and Andrew recreates that style perfectly with basic and curved lines. Even the minifigures in this scene fit right in: notice two charming flight attendants in their chic uniforms, taking a break before their next flight.
This atmospheric building by Pete Strege is called the Monotone Motel and almost seems like a black and white image until you spot the coloured minifigures near the staircase. The neo-gothic inspired architecture has some great brickwork detail near the base using old dark grey tiles against the dark blueish grey bricks. I particularly love the use of Thor hammers across the central area to add texture and detail to the stonework. The mix of old greys and the newer blueish grey LEGO colours allow some contrast within the grey-scale colour scheme.
It’s worth taking a closer look at the clock to see the details and clever parts used, a foil, a short spear with Pin Hole and a sword blade with bar. The builder mentioned that he searched for weeks for just the right parts, I think it’s a great combination.
Finnish AFOL Eero Okkonen created the most amazing street corner ever and we all love modular buildings at The Brothers Brick, especially when they have a distinct taste in architecture! So a mix of art-nouveau buildings inspired by the dream-like city of Prague definetely catches our eyes. Luckily, Eero went to further lengths to name each of the five houses, wrote brief explanations on building techniques and also provided some photographs of inspiring places. Read them all on his personal blog.
The official LEGO Ideas blog has just confirmed that nine LEGO Ideas projects have hit the 10,000 votes required to go on to the first review of 2016.
The nine projects include two Star Wars based ideas – a rolling BB-8 and the Jedi high council chamber. There are four minifigure scale buildings: an old fishing store, modular railway station, Jurassic Park visitor centre and a gingerbread house. The movie based project this time is Johnny Five, a model of the eponymous robot. Finally, in the science themed section we have a fossil museum display of dinosaur skeletons and a functional model of a particle accelerator.
Readers: Which projects have captured your attention, and which do you think will go on to pass the strict LEGO review criteria and become an actual LEGO set?
See a short description of each project by the creator after the jump
Microscale master Paul Wellington recreated the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s campus library at the University’s request. Paul used approximately 4800 individual LEGO pieces to achieve a convincing scale replica of the building and surrounding greenery. Some of the excellent microscale techniques on display here include vertical tiles set into the base as columns, and the trees (a similar style to those seen in Rocco Buttliere’s Palace of Westminster).
See more of Paul’s microscale work on his Flickr page.
This lovely towerblock by delayice is a great piece of microscale building. The blue and grey color scheme creates a sense of modernity and style, and there’s good details in the lower lobby building at the tower’s base. Check out the offset “headlight brick” providing wall texture and window detailing — nice work.
We often see modular buildings with European architecture, but the world is a much bigger place and offers many other forms of beauty. Kosmas Santosa from Jakarta decided to take matters into his own hands and built three modular buildings with Indonesian/Chinese architecture. The diorama is comprised of a tea house, a pharmacy and a residential building which are all inspired by actual locations. Despite the fact that these inspiring buildings look ruined, Kosmas took a nostalgic step and reanimated the street as a lively place.
You can find more detailed pictures on Kosmas’s own website. He built this diorama as part of a Bhinneka LUG display and even made a few trucks and carts to live up the scene.
This fantastic minifig scale art gallery is a creation by Tyler Sky and his wife Frances. The gallery includes both LEGO depictions of actual works of art and some new creations by the builders themselves. Atop the largest floor, you can see a LEGO version of Four Boats Stranded and inside the large window the obvious red square is part of Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow. The Orca on display in the foreground is definitely one of my favourite parts of this build.
The inside of Tyler’s art gallery is worth taking a virtual stroll through. See if you can spot the white croissants used as an internal architectural feature. Don’t miss the tribute to Bob Ross on the first floor balcony; he is standing painting happy little trees.
Have you ever seen abject poverty up close, where it lives? The brain almost doesn’t want to accept it: you literally cannot believe it. People can’t possibly live like this: but they do. And ironically, there is a kind of beauty there: colors that a designer would never choose, patterns that leave the eye wanting. The humanity of it cannot be contained. Shannon Sproule perfectly captures the heartbreaking chaos and vitality of economics gone horribly wrong in this wonderful vignette. And the presentation, spoofing the classist bias of the LEGO Architecture line, really hits home. Don’t expect to see this set in the next catalog.
Flickr album