Lego: Architecture Studio Set

Adult Fans Of Lego (or AFOLS for short) are certainly a big market, and in one of its previous attempts to monetize the Lego craze among adults, the company had released a “boutique-ish range of famous buildings”. From Frank Lloyd Wright’s famed Falling Water to the iconic Sydney Opera House – these kits were designed for adults to ‘build’, perhaps with their teenage kids and adorn their mantelpieces and office shelves!

Carrying forward the idea into the world of architecture, and looking to enter a niche market - comes the Lego Architecture Studio Set! After all, as a budding/aspiring architect, who doesn’t want to be inspired by Moshe Safdie?? Yes – the new Lego Architecture Studio Set has an Inspiration Manual featuring the works of famous architects! 

The new Lego Architecture Studio Set has 1200+ white and translucent bricks divided across 76 unique components, from chamfered wedge-shaped blocks to simple bricks. This is the first Lego set that comes without instructions. But a 250-page Inspiration Manual features contributions from a number of high-profile architects like Sou Fujimoto, Ma Yansong, Moshe Safdie - the kit is designed to “allow you to explore the ideas and principles of architecture”. The manual includes architectural diagrams – sketches and plans – to give references of scale, mass, surface, section, modules and repetition; as well as examples of projects built using the 1,200 bricks. 

However, missing from the set are the little yellow people (or “minifigs”) as their fixed scale of 1:48 would hugely reduce the adaptability of the block to varied scales. It would then limit the designer’s imagination; from thinking of/using one Lego block as a single brick, an entire floor, or a whole block in a large urban development!

Whether present-day architects - with so many incredibly versatile options at their fingertips - would cotton up to the idea of Lego models - time will tell! But the idea would certainly appeal to die-hard Lego freaks!