When not designing buildings, what do architects like to do in their spare time? Why, build them on Lego sets, of course.
Lego’s architectural model series has been engaging a more mature audience for a number of years now, with iconic buildings such as the Eiffel Tower, the White House, the Burj Al Arab and our very own Sydney Opera House having been flattered with a plastic brick rendition.
The latest addition to the slew of stackable icons is the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, released in honour of what would’ve been architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th birthday. The late American architect – born in 1867 – completed the spiralling New York art museum in 1959. More than half a century later, it remains one of the world’s best-loved buildings.
The Lego tribute-in-miniature comes with 744 pieces which, if assembled correctly, reproduce the museum in relative detail – from the iconic circular rotunda, to the adjacent limestone tower, to the lettering on the building’s façade.
Of course, as one of the world’s most iconic existing buildings, this is not the first Lego kit to have celebrated it; a first Guggenheim Lego model was released in 2009. The recent release, however, is truer to the scale and geometries of Lloyd Wright’s design.
“This accurately detailed Lego model faithfully recreates the curves and distinctive lines that have made [the Guggenheim Museum] an architectural icon for the last half-century,” says Lego in an accompanying statement.
