Tag Archives: Microscale

Some say “Go big or go home!” but it takes real talent to compress something down to just a few studs and still keep it recognizable. Of course, many of the micro models we feature here aren’t so small after all, whether it’s a vast cityscape or starship.

A media empire under one LEGO roof

Manhattan bustles with the edifices of American enterprise, towering symbols of capitalism whose many styles span New York City’s distinct historical periods. Past, present, and future often lie within the same block, Art Deco and Modern architecture mingling to reflect the city’s status as a permanent symbol of capitalism. One building which exemplifies this mix of old and new is the Hearst Tower, painstakingly recreated here in LEGO form by Daniel Stoffler.

Built for and named after the famous American publisher William Randolph Hearst, the building claims a spot as the headquarters for one of the world’s largest media corporations, Hearst Communications, with ownership of numerous newspapers and publications including Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan. The builder took on a daunting challenge recreating Hearst Tower, but the effort paid off with this accurate and realistically detailed model – which includes the original six-story base as well as the 40-story glass tower finished in 2006, here accomplished perfectly with triangular road sign elements. This makes for an interesting mix of architecture and an extremely impressive LEGO model.

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Magnificent micro-builds in glass domes

Building micro-scale brings a unique set of challenges, and finding the right piece to represent a particular feature can often be a particularly tricky task. Builder yang wang seems to have a knack for it though, as demonstrated by these two delightful domed dioramas. The first is a wonderful Romanesque revival style castle poised on a rock over the sea. The highlights for me are the tiny ship with smokestacks, the small tree made from a brown droid arm, and the spindly towers with golden ski pole spires.

Continuing the colorful creation on a rock under a dome theme, the second build is a vertical wooden town atop a rocky outcrop, complete with bell tower and windmill. I love how the builder has used the grill plates to give the small buildings windows — plus there’s that cute little car made from a rollerskate. And not only does the dome make the building inside look wonderful, it also keeps the dust off!

Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn

LEGO microscale is typically reserved for contemporary buildings like skyscrapers and pizza delivery shops, but recently Issac Snyder has been building one amazing tiny medieval model after another. Check out his microscale Dwarven workshop and his tiny walled port town. However the micro-masterpiece is surely this gorgeous Edoras from the second installment of The Lord of the Rings films.

If this MOC would look nice sitting on your desk or shelf, then you’re in luck! Isaac donated his lovely creation as a prize in the 2017 Middle Earth LEGO Olympics (MELO 2017) contest over on MOCpages. The first round of the contest runs through May 21, 2017, so you’ve got nearly a month to enter the fray.

But where are Princess Ida & the Totem?

Ok, I have to admit when I first saw this I immediately thought it was supposed to be from Monument Valley, the addicting puzzle game from ustwo. But alas, Bangoo H was actually building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. However, my misinterpretation of the source material most certainly did not take away from the fact that this is a serene little model that is wonderfully built.

The cascading water, terraces and steps all come together to perfectly represent some of the funnest levels of the…oh sorry…I mean, the ancient Babylonians’ amazing feat of engineering.

I betcha if you spun the base those two staircases would line-up perfectly, and a few stacked 1×1 yellow bricks couldn’t hurt either…

Watch folks race in the Nordic sport of folkracing

For those who are not familiar with the sport of Folkracing, it’s a popular and inexpensive form of rally racing with older beat-up cars, which originated in Finland. The races take place on specially designed gravel tracks, and Nybohov Creation Ltd has created this beautifully colourful LEGO track for some micro rally cars to race around. The details and textures look fantastic, with everything from trees and foliage to landscaping with a couple of colourful buildings.

See more details of this tiny race track

Neo-Tokyo menaced by spindly mechanoid

It’s nice to see a LEGO mech placed into some sort of context, and F@bz knocks it right out of the park with this diorama of an unusual mech making a nuisance of itself on a busy city street. The cars and commuter train give an idea of the scale of the fearsome machine, and while the rest of the backdrop is very plain, it creates a real focus on the mechanical star of the show.

The mech design is wonderfully weird — spindly legs, a relatively smooth carapace stuffed with greebly detailing, and that vast sail panel sticking up from the machine’s rear. I love when LEGO builders let their imaginations run riot in genres that generally have established “rules”. This model breaks just about all the norms — and does it with real style.

The road to Golgotha

With a minimalist microscale style, Andrew JN to evokes the worn road to Golgotha, where the Christ trod at the start of the Easter story. Andrew uses earth tones to sculpt the narrow way of this normally sleepy Jewish town. The tiny villagers and distinct Roman soldiers consist of only 3 or 4 elements each, but there’s no mistaking the angry mob surrounding a brown cross.

Nine chapels of St. Basil’s Cathedral are a marvelous example of LEGO microscale architecture

Markus Rollbühler is a LEGO product designer based in Billund, Denmark. Despite spending his weekdays working with LEGO pieces, Markus challenges himself to build microscale versions of the world’s most famous cathedrals in his spare time. His very special series of architectural masterpieces featuring Frauenkirche Dresden and Santa Maria della Salute is now joined by a marvelous copy of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia.

St. Basil’s Cathedral is famous for its nine chapels of vibrant colors. Markus did an amazing job recreating each of them in a unique building style using bricks, hoses, slopes, and tiles of over a dozen different colors. However, the most genius trick of the build is nine sonic screwdrivers right from Doctor Who sets used as crosses on top of the chapels.

And, of course, the cathedral is totally worth checking out from all angles — make sure you visit Markus’ photosream for more high-res pictures!

A place to observe the stars

Unfortunately, Madrid now suffers from too much light pollution to be a good spot for observing the stars and planets. The Real Observatorio de Madrid remains the seat of the Spanish National Astronomical Observatory and houses historic scientific equipment, including a 25-foot reflecting telescope from the 18th Century. Víctor M. Nouvilas has built a fantastic LEGO version of the Observatory in the style of LEGO’s own Architecture theme. Victor has captured the neoclassical style of the building with its clean lines and, in particular, the dramatic columns of the main entrance and the circular temple-like dome on top.

One tiny leap for mankind

Our first look at the forthcoming LEGO Ideas Saturn V model prompted a bit of discussion amongst the staffers here at The Brothers Brick. A comparison of the portion of the set revealed thus far with schematics of the original rocket suggests the model is going to stand 3 feet tall. That set me thinking — what size would the astronauts be at this scale? Well, once you have a thought like that in your head, what else can you do but get building?

This started with the little figures and went on from there. Once the Saturn V set is released, I plan on building a launch tower to stand alongside it, with these little guys trooping across the gantry to board their ride. We choose to go to the teensy-weensy moon.

Neo-Tokyo from Akira in LEGO microscale

A few years ago, I built a microscale version of Tokyo, complete with rampaging kaiju. While Marco Gan‘s microscale Tokyo is considerably less colorful, it accurately captures the view of Neo-Tokyo seen in the 1988 Japanese animated movie Akira (and Katsuhiro Otomo’s original manga version that ran between 1982 and 1990). The monochrome cityscape is built on a simple blue baseplate, but includes a density of detail, from the bridge spanning the two halves of the city to a proliferation of landscape fragments.

To tie his build to its inspiration, Marco also included a small backdrop with brick-built lettering spelling “AKIRA” with pops of red reminiscent of Kaneda’s bike. But it’s not until you view the diorama from a higher angle that you discover Marco has also recreated the distinctive outline of the bay from the original comic, representing a screaming human head.

12-foot-long LEGO Golden Gate Bridge is realistically suspended

Microscale architecture builder Rocco Buttliere has achieved a remarkable feat of LEGO engineering with his 40,000+ piece model of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. Like the actual suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, Rocco’s beautiful and highly detailed LEGO rendition crosses its 6 foot long central span suspended by a combination of red string, Technic bushings, LEGO flexible hoses, and non-LEGO metal wire.

Rocco’s LEGO model even includes the buildings and landscaping of the Presidio in Golden Gate Park.

See more photos of Rocco’s incredible LEGO Golden Gate Bridge on Flickr.