The best skylines you can build with LEGO Architecture sets, so far

Paris, Dubai, Shanghai, Tokyo and New York are just some of the urban landscapes that you can reproduce with LEGO construction kits. The Danish company enables everyone to be an archistar for a day with the LEGO Architecture series, giving everyone the chance to have one of the world's most iconic skylines at their fingertips.

All the architects probably played with LEGO bricks. Actually, we can say that it is thanks to the use of coloured interlocking modules that many of us have developed a propensity towards the design and free imagination of entire cities. It is no coincidence that Domus, on the occasion of the presentation of its previous director, the Dutch architect Winy Maas, organised a workshop for 10-12 year old students, in which through play they imagined the cities of the future, without setting limits to their imagination.

Proof that the link between LEGO and architecture is deep is also evident in the new headquarters of the Danish brand, whose design was commissioned to archistar Bjarke Ingels and his studio. BIG's LEGO House is a modular architecture devoted to play and learning, a small urban village on multiple levels with overlapping blocks and communicating spaces.

The LEGO Architecture collection was introduced in 2008, with the reproduction of two well-known buildings in Chicago: the Willis Tower and the John Hancock Center. In just a few years, scale models of some of the most important 20th century architecture have been released, such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Waterfall House, the Farnsworth House, designed by Mies van der Rohe, or Le Corbusier's Ville Savoye, that is considered a manifesto of modern architecture. Among the iconic architecture presented by LEGO are the Empire State Building in New York and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which at 828 meters is the tallest skyscraper in the world. The Skyline series was launched in 2019, but already counts several cities. The latest two are Tokyo and Dubai.

The LEGO Architecture collection is designed for an audience of adults and connoisseurs. Each kit is in fact composed of about 600 pieces and given the complexity is recommended to those over the age of 16. For those who don't want to follow the instructions and prefer to free their imagination, LEGO Architecture Studio has been designed (now unobtainable): a kit consisting of 1,200 white and transparent pieces that can be freely assembled. Instead of the assembly manual, the product includes a 250-page guide with examples of construction and assembly techniques from major international studios such as Rex, SOM and Sou Fujimoto.

Created in 1932 by a Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, the LEGO brand is destined to survive major global social and technological changes. His grandson, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who was CEO of the company until 2004, says: “The LEGO brick concept is timeless. The ‘physical’ game will always exist, especially because it stimulates children’s imagination. Children have this natural inner impulse to learn and try new things: we should carry this attitude with us for the rest of our lives. We are getting older every day, but we don’t need to grow up: inside we can always remain children.”