Top 5 LEGO Architecture sets? What's your favorite?

[henrysunset]

What is your favorite Lego Architecture set?

I love the Lego Architecture Series and have built almost every model. I just completed an article on my blog where I've identified my 5 favorite sets under 50$. I'd love to hear what other fans of the Architecture Series think.

LINK: http://tomalphin.com/2014/03/top-5-lego-architecture-sets.html

Some questions I'd love to hear your thoughts on:

• How many people on this forum have built most of (or all) of the sets in this series?
  
• What's your favorite set?
  
• What most important for a great set in the Architecture series? Realism, advanced building techniques, great parts selection, the instruction booklet, size of finished model, price?
  

Sincerely,

---tom

[rollermonkey]

I have, and have built, all of the sets including Marina Bay Sands. (I did have to Pick-a-Brick the John Hancock though.)

I'm not going to use the $50 ceiling, as that eliminates way too many of the sets.

In no particular order:

Robie House

Marina Bay Sands

Imperial Hotel

UN Building

Guggenheim

I don't have a favorite, I like some more than others, but no clear favorite.

I do have a least favorite, though...

White House. Totally meh.

As for what makes a great Architecture set?

An iconic building, faithfully recreated at an appropriate scale.

[Legogal]

Rollermonkey, how did you end up with that name?

I am going with your list but have to add the Taj Majal instead of the Guggenheim.

BTW, You have great taste in Architecture sets!

[Steve309]

I have all the architecture set. Only series I buy day 1 of release.

Marina bay sands.

UN building

Imperial palace

Those are my favorite.

I have done pick a brick for

World trade centres

Cn tower

Prudential tower

Torre caja Madrid

Citigroup tower ( New York)

Those are in size comparable to the initial sets of Sears tower. Empire State....

For me personally. I get more excited seeing a tower built then a building.

I like the Burj Khalifa more than villa savoy.

But oddly enough my least favourite is leaning tower of Pisa.

[Andy D]

Of the five mentioned by the OP my least favorite is the Space Needle, but mainly because of he stability, it is just too fragile for my liking. Of the others I have bulit all but the White House, so I can't comment on that one yet. Of the other three, I would have to say I like the UN complex best, but I do like all of them. I tend to like he micro build architecture sets best mainly because of how I a using them... That is, they are being used as small decorator items in my office. Also, the micro builds are intreguing to me because of the level of detail and artistic interpretation in such a small scale. Forgot to mention, the Rockefeller Center, that one is very interesting also.

I am currently working on the Farnsworth House, I like it for the early Mid-Century Modern design, however the building is a little large/out of scale for my other Arhcitecture models.

Looking forward to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Eiffel Tower and Trevi Fountain.

I would like to see the World Trade Center Complex (the 1970's verion) as a micro build. Anybody seen any plans for the old WTC complex in micro build?

Andy D

Edited March 22, 2014 by Andy D

[Steve309]

I would like to see the World Trade Center Complex (the 1970's verion) as a micro build. Anybody seen any plans for the old WTC complex in micro build?

Andy D

The reason I built a custom of World Trade Centers (1970) because I feel they will never make one due to 9/11

And they'd make One World Trade Centre(2014) first.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Steve309

[Andy D]

The reason I built a custom of World Trade Centers (1970) because I feel they will never make one due to 9/11

And they'd make One World Trade Centre(2014) first.

Do you have any photos of your WTC?

Andy D

[Toby Adams]

There will only be one for me, Big Ben. (Imma British)

[Steve309]

Do you have any photos of your WTC?

Andy D

I do. I will post later today. When Infront of my computer.

[montgocloud]

My architecture favorites are:

1. Robie House

2. Fallingwater

3. Villa Savoye

4. Imperial Hotel

5. Farnsworth House

[rollermonkey]

Rollermonkey, how did you end up with that name?

I am going with your list but have to add the Taj Majal instead of the Guggenheim.

BTW, You have great taste in Architecture sets!

I don't have Taj (and never will at those prices), and even though I do have London Bridge and both versions of the Sydney Opera House, I do not consider the Creator Expert sets as part of the Architecture line.

As for "rollermonkey" the roller part is from roller coasters... The monkey part was a nickname given to me in my twenties, right about when the internet started becoming prevalent. My first e-mail address was actually munkey@aol.com. The roller was added later because six-letter words for e-mail and logins were generally not available or permissible when I got divorced, (the aol was her parents account) thus the 12-letter rollermonkey, which I've been using since about 1999 or 2000.

Edited March 22, 2014 by rollermonkey

[Legogal]

Like the roller monkey explanation! Cool!

I would not have paid 300US for a new Taj when it came out...too much money as we were poorer then. But Hubby ordered it for a Christmas, surprise and we built it with my son home from uni. It was a very satisfying build with each of us doing parts of it and then putting it together. Then Hubby built a base and added lighting with a switch on the wall, and it lights up our circular stair landing very gracefully. So it means a lot to us. I can understand why you don't want to pay the market prices, and at that many pieces, it would be a nightmare to BL. It was hard enough to build with all those pieces all in one box.

It is fun seeing that many of us like the similar sets in this theme. The subject of architecture has always fascinated me with many notebooks of drawings of buildings made from age 8 on. Then at 16 I had my first B in high school from a drafting teacher who did not like girls. Really p(%*T($#*%( %ssed me off. So I dropped the dream of becoming an architect. Too bad because it was what I wanted to be all through growing up.

Architecture as a subject has always interested me and led to trips all over just looking at interesting buildings. Alvar Aalto has done a string of them in Scandanavia. I took my Mom through many of those buildings during my twenties when we Eurailed through Scandanavia and Europe for a month. The architecture we saw during the trips I took her on was just unbelievable. So anything that raises awareness of design is a plus in my books. Thanks to TLG for this series.

[jimmynick]

Good topic; there's such a variety of Architecture sets and room for discussion.

I will choose, in order:

1. Robie House
   
2. Villa Savoye
   
3. Fallingwater
   
4. Sungnyemun
   
5. Space Needle
   

I choose the Space Needle because the technique of using flex-tubing to recreate the curved sides is very clever. I wonder why they didn't do that for the Eiffel Tower? Also, I agree that the Taj Mahal is not an Architecture set.

[Steve309]

Do you have any photos of your WTC?

Andy D

My WTC. I built it about 2 years ago

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My other customs I built

CN Tower (Toronto), Citigroup Tower (New York), Prudential tower (Boston), Torre Caja Madrid (Madrid)

Edited March 23, 2014 by Steve309

[rollermonkey]

I'm digging the CN Tower and the Torre Caja Madrid.

[Andy D]

My WTC. I built it about 2 years ago

... Snip images...

@Steve309. Thanks, they all look great! The CN tower is very well done, they all are!

The WTC appears to be between 10 and 12 inches tall. Is that correct?

I like your colors, but when I get to it I plan to make the WTC in white with black trim.

Andy D

[Steve309]

The WTC appears to be between 10 and 12 inches tall. Is that correct?

Andy D

Thanks.

Top of tower is just about 7 inches

To top of antenna 8 3/4 inches

[henrysunset]

@steve: those are some great custom models befitting the "architecture" theme with a compressed scale and the iconic black tile bases. Love it!

I am loving the diverse responses to the thread. It seems like everyone likes different sets in the series, which is really cool. That said, the bigger sets seem to be a little more popular, which makes sense since we are all enthusiastic builders, and the bigger models have more details.

---tom

[ShaydDeGrai]

I've built the entire Architecture line, though a few of the early models (Sear Tower, Rockefeller Center) I just downloaded instructions for and built using parts on hand because they just seemed overly simplistic for the price.

On the question of the top 5 "little" kits, the Space Needle and the Empire State Building were really the models that put the (then new) Architecture line on my radar. Unlike the Sears Tower and the Hancock Center, those two kits really spoke to me with respect capturing iconic forms in a compact scale.

Chronologically, my next two top small kits would have to be the Guggenheim Museum and the White House. They were a bit larger, had interesting builds and did a nice job of capturing abstract forms within the confines of standard Lego parts in a tiny form.

To round out the top five, I'd have to go with the Eiffel Tower, sure it pales by comparison to the three foot tall version of a few years ago, but for 35USD and only a foot tall, I think it has a lot of character.

There are a lot of interesting models in the Architecture line. I'm fond of the color palette and use on SNOT in the UN Headquarters. At the higher end, the Robie House (despite the occasional hell of stacked plates during the build) and Imperial Hotel are two of my favorite kits (Architecture or otherwise) of recent years, but for "top five under fifty" I the Space Needle, Empire State, White House, GuggenHeim and Eiffel Tower are the standouts for the kits that I both enjoyed building and continue to display prominently to this day.

At the other extreme, there are a few sets that just didn't resonate with me. The Sears Tower, Hancock Center and Rockefeller Center are the only kits in the line that I chose not to buy because, having downloaded the instruction books, they were just too simple. The only parts I didn't already own were the printed name plates and the subject matter itself just wasn't, personally, compelling.

Farnsworth house and Villa Savoye were reasonably accurate models of examples of an architecture style that I find to be a bit over-hyped and not particularly interesting, I've been building boxy houses out of Lego since I was four, why do I need a famous Architect to "inspire" yet another box? Those models, in my mind were too "safe", too close to the natural form of the bricks themselves to really feel compelling. If you look as something like the Eiffel Tower from a few feet away, a casual (non-AFOL) observer might say "That's Lego?" because the forms and connections are unexpected compared to the traditional studs on top, right angle builds of their childhoods. The original Farnsworth and Savoye buildings themselves look like they might have started AS traditional Lego houses scaled up to human size so when you scale them back down, they just don't seem that distinctive. This is also why, every time TLG releases a new Architecture kit that ISN'T the long rumored Habitat 67 or some other glorified stack of boxes I rejoice a little. As an historic bit of architecture, fine, but as a compelling Lego kit, I want them to be pushing the envelope on both form and building technique.

The Big Ben Clock tower is the only Architecture set I've ever MOD'ed. The proportions just didn't look right to me. Maybe that was deliberate on the part of TLG, it got me to buy the set twice just to get the spare parts I needed for the MOD.

I'm looking forward to the Trevi Fountain. I've never seen the original in person, but from the box art it looks like the kit should be interesting.

[Herky]

Top 5, no money restrictions:

Robie House

Fallingwater

Farnsworth

Guggenheim

Marina Bay Sands

Have them all like a lot of folks, thanks to my friend Rollermonkey on MBS, guess I like the FLW buildings most, there is another thread we had here on what folks would like to see made as well. Steve - I like your WTC and CN Tower.

I would love to see Lego move into famous ballparks like Wrigley, Fenway, Baltimore, Dodgers, Giants and more. I believe Trevi is June.

There is a lot of conjecture on what makes up the Architecture line, some include the creator expert series, some just stick to the Architecture label on the box for the 21xxx series. You also have the creator 3 in 1 houses.

[mrdinosaur]

Love the Architecture line, and IMO it's been getting better each year.

Favorites:

1 UN Headquarters

2 Marina Bay Sands

3 Eiffel Tower

4 Villa Savoye

5 Brandenburg Gate

Marina Bay and UN HQ are a joy to build. Very interesting if occasionally overly-complicated building techniques. In the UN HQ there are some very cool half-stud offsets that is a building marvel. Marina Bay Sands is nonstop SNOT action and is great. Villa Savoye is a bit boring of a build, but I love the completed model. The level of detail is great. B-Gate surprised me. Pretty simple build, but satisfying and I really like how the model looks. I like how unique the build is on the E-Tower; very clever and surprisingly stable.

Least favorites:

Rockefeller Centre, Guggenheim, White House

The White House is particularly bad. As far as resemblance, it looks spot on but oh man what an awful build. Repetitive and unimaginative. The Guggenheim is the same to me. No surprises, not much in the clever building department. And Rockefeller Centre, IMO, is just lazy. I'm glad they ditched the 'inspired by' approach they did early in the Architecture line and actually started making the models match the buildings.

[Rufus]

Hmmm... this thread needs a poll. Coming soon....

And a poll has been added.

This relies on your honesty in only selecting five from the multiple choice poll (that and it being a public poll so we can all see who can't count! )

Happy polling!

[henrysunset]

And a poll has been added.

Awesome, I didn't know the forum supported polls, and I'm happy to see that you created one. Cm'on people - more votes!

[rollermonkey]

Nobody enjoyed stacking 100+ round grey bricks for the Burj?

lol

[henrysunset]

Nobody enjoyed stacking 100+ round grey bricks for the Burj?

Um, no. I'm pretty sure we know it would be top of the charts if we made a survey to pick the *WORST* set in the series.

If I had to pick the top 5 *WORST* sets, I would pick:

1) Burj Khalifa - boring contruction and bad facimile of real building.

2) Guggenheim - in real life it's a spiral that keeps getting wider at the top. This is just a stack of discs.

3) Sydney Opera House - Too blocky to capture it's beauty.

4) Rockefeller center - scale is too small to capture the feel of the building.

5) Leaning Tower of Pisa - boring model, misses something by not using round bricks.

What do you think? Which did you like least?

Edited March 31, 2014 by henrysunset