Tag Archives: Church

Stained glass in Shanghai

The last time builder Hugo Huang shared an architectural build, it sent me down a research rabbit hole of light boats, German brewers, and Chinese occupation. Once again, Hugo uses LEGO to recreate a historic sight that’s too obscure for the travelogues but reveals a fascinating history. The Catholic Country Church, lovingly recreated in brick yellow and sand green by Hugo, was designed by architect László Hudec and completed in 1925. Hudec was a Hungarian who served in WWI, was captured by Russians and imprisoned in Siberia, jumped a train, and escaped to Shanghai where he joined an American architectural firm before starting his own practice. In the following decades, he designed many landmark buildings in the city, including several churches.

Catholic Country Church,Shanghai

Hugo’s LEGO version is a fitting tribute with wonderful stained glass windows made of transparent cheese slopes, and incredible domes made of sand green aloe vera points from the succulent collection. I love it when a LEGO creation introduces me to new building techniques as well as fascinating facts about our world!

A saintly LEGO interlude in Venice

Barthezz Brick returns to Venice and the world of Assassin’s Creed 2 with another epic diorama of Renaissance life in LEGO. Last time, Barthezz created markets, military towers, and a bustling harbor out of 250,000 bricks. For this epic encore, Barthezz focuses on a single building, but what a heavenly building it is. And of course, the diorama is bursting with character moments and amazing details.

Assassin's Creed: Venice 1486 - Interlude (main)

The centerpiece church looks great with a white marble foundation and grey accents. Boomerangs and hockey sticks make for unexpected details in the church’s ornate stonework. In front of the church stands an angelic fountain, one of a handful of elements that Barthezz brought over from the last build. I love the mosaic under the fountain, incorporating cut-out tiles.  We can also start to appreciate the many stories transpiring beneath the assassin’s watchful eyes, like the out-of-work builder who is about to lose his lunch to a hungry gull and a pig herder, leaving behind some stinky surprises.

Assassin's Creed: Venice 1486 - Interlude (main3)

Synchronize with the Animus to explore more of Renaissance Venice!

Thai-style church gets the LEGO architecture treatment

While the LEGO Group may have only just released the first set based on a house of worship with  21061 Notre-Dame de Paris, churches have long been a popular theme for adult builders, whether coming from an interest in architecture, history, or faith. Inspired by a recent trip to Thailand, builder Anne Mette Vestergård recreates a landmark church very different from the cathedrals and chapels more often seen in LEGO: the Holy Redeemer Church of Bangkok. Built in 1954, the church is built in the style of traditional Thai temples, with square columns, stacked gables, enameled tiles, and decorative chofa along the roof edges. Anne Mette does a phenomenal job recreating the details in miniature, down to the microscale cars out front. Unikitty tails in white integrate surprisingly well as a Thai-style flourish. But it’s that colorful tile roof in the distinct Thai palette that makes the church sublime.

LEGO Holy Redeemer Church Bangkok

Danish builder Anne Mette creates large-scale architectural models professionally, mostly at minifig scale, for public viewing. Whether you’re interested in Nordic history, theme parks, or LEGo as a medium to explore current events, her works are well worth checking out.

A small LEGO village that’s big on action

This three-building LEGO village scene by Daniël de Wit has lots of fun details. A fence made from long rubber hoses keeps a pair of LEGO animals in their pen. And some lovely stained-glass windows in the small church are born of transparent red and green elements and some studs-not-on-top technique. Vines can be seen growing up the side of that house in front, which seems to have caught the eye of a nearby goat. The slight angle of the church leads the eye to some sort of confrontation on the path… maybe this knight has been racking up a hefty tab at the local watering hole.

small medieval village

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.

Chapel from the Golden Age of Piracy

Take a moment’s quiet in this atmospheric LEGO vignette

Whatever your take on their purpose, it has to be said that religious buildings like churches or cathedrals can be quite amazing places. There’s the spiritual aspect of course, but even on a purely material level, often they’re just downright pretty. That’s definitely the case with Casey McCoy‘s vignette. It’s a captivating scene depicting a priest in a moment of quiet contemplation. The whole thing is beautiful, but so are some of the building techniques! The cheese-slope stained glass windows are what draw the eye, and what give this scene its distinctive atmosphere. But cheese slopes are also used in the floor tiling to great effect. The candles are also great, made of Technic pins and lever handles.

A Priest’s Prayer - 1

You may be wondering how the Casey has managed to manipulate the figure into that quite un-minifigure like pose. The answer is with rubberbands, care and a lot of patience! A white rubberband also doubles as his clerical collar, which is a nice touch. There’s a good view of it here – a gorgeous snapshot that almost makes you hear the echoing silence of an empty church.

A Priest’s Prayer - 3

Is a LEGO builder’s work – or a church – ever truly finished?

I used to live down the road from a cathedral, and the one thing I have noticed about them and churches is that more often than not, they seem to always have scaffolding up somewhere for restoration work. This is based purely on anecdotal evidence of course, but I will use Margrabia Mokotowski‘s beautiful LEGO church as another datapoint to support this dubious claim! Inspired by a real church in Margrabia’s native Poland, it wouldn’t look out of place as the centerpiece of a medieval township, even with the heavy weathering in evidence with some nice texturing. The ever-present scaffolding, though, belies its true setting in a modern-day LEGO city. It’s funny how a few minifigures and safety barriers can change the context of a whole build by a few hundred years!

Church_2

Out, out brief candle

LEGO love doesn’t always last. This creation by Kit Nugent is proof that sometimes even in LEGOland love ends prematurely. Kit created a massive church. I wouldn’t dare to guess how many bricks high it is. In the middle of the shot we can spot a woman mourning the loss of her lover who perished at the battlefront. Kit used not one, but two types of boats to create details in this creation. It is weird that something as big as a boat can be considered a detail. There is a ‘wooden’ rowing boat hidden in the altar piece. The boat is used to frame a wooden statue, which works perfectly. The other boat is a rubber boat that is used to frame a doorway. Best thing about this shot is the amount of light that appears to come through the enormous window and puts the scene with the lovers in the spotlight.

"Out, Out Brief Candle"

Monastery with goats in the shrubbery

Oddly coloured LEGO foliage always catches my eyes. So this creation by Joe hits the sweet spot. Not only is the trees foliage purple and violet, the grass is lime coloured. The path leading towards the monastery is earth orange. So all of the secondary colours are accounted for, which creates a very pleasing aesthetic. You wouldn’t want to roll down these grassy hills, because the high grass is made using lots of sharp katanas. You can see this is not the living-in-poverty type of monastery as they somehow were able to afford a goat.

The Pilgrim

Everdell Chapel in the brick

Next to LEGO I am a huge board game nerd, and I love it when hobbies collide. Isaac and John Snyder drew inspiration from one of my favourite board games. Everdell is a worker placement game in which you build the homes of the many forest critters that inhabit the forest of Everdell. The artwork was done by Andrew Bosley and Dann May. The playing cards depict forest locations but also its inhabitants. The illustrations on the cards look truly as if they came straight out of a fairy tale. I can surely see why Isaac and John would draw inspiration from it. In this creation we see the Everdell chapel which is built on a rock in a foggy lake. A grey Belville tower roof has been incorporated in the landscaping and to me it is mind boggling that this large piece blends in with the scenery so well.

Everdell Chapel

The resemblance to the source material is really amazing. The Tudor style is done exceptionally well, and including yellowed and damaged white bricks to depict the decay of the building is really clever. On the playing card there are no animals included but it is nice to get some forest critters in there to make the scene appear more alive. They even get cute custom outfits made out of capes and rubber bands. I am curious to see if these two will keep drawing inspiration from this lovely board game. One thing is for sure, I wouldn’t mind!

San Juan Bell Towers Eleganza

LEGO creations by Jonas Kramm never cease to amaze us here at The Brothers Brick. For Jonas’ latest creation, inspiration was drawn from the San Juan level of the ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider’ game featuring Lara Croft. Jonas’ eye for detail is exquisite as usual. We get lots of architectural details including several brick built bells. The smaller bells feature the Scala round brick with flower edges. The bun slope gets used as roof top shingles and there is an intricate iron framework placed in the bell tower created out of droid arms and burnt sausages. The ingot bar is used to create some urban decay and if you look closely at the church door, you’ll notice the ingot bar is used there in combination with the pyramid tile to represent the detailed woodwork of the door. On the left we see a grave that gives access to a beach cave where we can spot a small nod to the LEGO Islanders from the nineties. Somehow I feel like booking a vacation to San Juan now…

Lara Croft - San Juan

Ariandel inspired microscale church

I really enjoy it when a builder thinks outside the box. Nathan Hake shows us that he is very capable of doing so. For his micro-scale LEGO church, he used wheel cover with y shaped spikes for the main round window in the church tower. There are ice scates on the roof and the entrance is a plate with tooth which is brilliant in its simplicity. My guess is that this church is gothic inspired because it matches the 5 key architectural elements: large stained glass windows, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, flying buttresses, and ornate decoration. The ribbed vaults are a bit hard to spot from the outside, but we can all imagine them there, right?

Micro Lego Church