Earlier this year I visited MoMA in New York City, where I saw a wonderful exhibit titled “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980.” I was particularly impressed by the architecture of Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil built in a lightning blitz of construction between 1956 and 1960. Daniel Stoeffler has built a microscale LEGO version of the Metropolitan Cathedral, designed (as were most buildings in the city) by architect Oscar Niemeyer. I’d love to see Daniel extend this LEGO series with the dome and bowl of the National Congress Building, the president’s residence, and so on.

The name Notre Dame may be most widely associated with a certain cathedral in Paris, France. But the cathedral of Notre Dame is Strasbourg (also in France) is actually more than twice as tall. In fact for over two centuries it was the tallest building in the world – taller even than the Great Pyramid of Giza – eventually being surpassed in the Victorian era by such behemoths as the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument. But it still remains one of the finest surviving examples of late Gothic architecture, and is nicely captured here in microscale LEGO form by Daniel Stoeffler.

Looking like something right out of LEGO’s own Architecture series, this microscale model of the iconic statue of Christ The Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro is the work of German builder Jens Ohrndorf. Proportioning, detail and texture are hard to get right at this scale (especially with a human figure) but Jens nails it, and the result is immediately recognizable.