House of bricks

Today I cracked open 4000010 LEGO® House and figured I'd review it - given that the set is not readily available, has a rather interesting inclusion, and of course to shoehorn in a reminder that New Elementary's LEGO House competition closes in 9 days! Fret not - I didn't open the copy sent by the Community and Events Engagement Team which remains safely mint in sealed box for the winner. It's another copy I bought on a recent trip to Billund, which is the only town on Planet Earth where the set has been made available for sale. This limited release is a gesture from The LEGO Group (TLG) to local businesses, in light of the disruption being exacted in the centre of town to construct the real LEGO House which will be a museum, or rather an "interactive experience centre" in modern-day parlance. When I was there, the last of the existing buildings on the site were being torn down.

The sum of its parts

I'm ending my series of posts about the Architecture theme today with a rather different post, littered with data tables rather than pretty pictures. See, I like numbers too. I thought I'd try to examine the question of how 'valuable' Architecture sets are, because I often get my knickers in a knot when other AFOLs moan about the cost. I shouldn't, because they're usually right, but I'm just overly defensive of this range that I enjoy so much.

Return of the Trans-Light Blue

The official LEGO® Architecture website used to run polls where visitors could vote which building, from a list of ten options, should next get the official treatment. It was a rather odd idea, given that they clearly stated that there was no guarantee the 'winners' would actually get made into sets, which was indeed the fate of one of them. And as it turned out, two of the least popular inclusions have been turned into sets (The Leaning Tower of Pisa and The Eiffel Tower). Stranger still was the inclusion of some religious buildings, a subject which LEGO have steadfastly avoided releasing (aside from an innocent church in the 1950s) but given these didn't win, no embarrassment ensued.

United by SNOT

© 1987 UN Photo/Lois Conner. Some rights reserved

Next in my little run of Architecture reviews is a set that was released in October 2013, 21018 United Nations Headquarters. Personally I think it was a great choice of subject for this line; although it's not as well known as some of the other buildings in the Landmark series, it's a truly international building. It sits on land granted to the United Nations by the US and was designed by a team of architects from across the globe (most notably the modernist heroes Niemeyer and Le Corbusier). Whether or not you know of or have visited it, this is a great model to build. And now I'll definitely go to see the original if in New York City!

A tour of the Eiffel

I'm having a bit of an Architecture phase at the moment, building some of the recent sets in this line which have been burning holes in my shelves for weeks, or even months. I've always been interested in architecture - both my parents were architects - and I suppose it is true to say the LEGO® Architecture line is my favourite theme, and that creating my own microscale architecture is my favourite building pastime. This is partly because 21005 Fallingwater was my conversion set, but it's not just sentimentality. As the legend on the boxes says, "Enjoy your building experience." That's a cheesy bit of commercialese, but I almost always do enjoy them. The packaging is superb, the booklets have interesting facts and the finished models make great display pieces.

The builds usually also contain stuff you wouldn't see in a regular kids' set, and hopefully these next few posts will highlight what sets Architecture apart for me. In this post I'm looking at 21019 The Eiffel Tower which was officially released on January 1, although it has been available for a few weeks in France.

Like a virgin

The mysterious 21050 Architecture Studio has just surfaced. There has been little info about this set but the general assumption online was that it would be exclusive, at least initially, to US Barnes & Noble stores who are running special LEGO® Architecture Studio store events from 25-28 July 2013. But no; a single copy was spotted and bought by 'Miro78' at Legoland California today.

It doesn't build anything in particular, there are no instructions. In fact there's an amusing and crazed disclaimer on the box stating, "Picture for inspiration only. Model cannot be built from the pieces in this box. Model shows pieces not included in this set. See side panel for full parts listing." Even more amusing if you read that out loud in the voice of a Dalek.

Miro78 has posted this helpful picture of said side panel on his Flickr, so look at the pic here and ask yourself - would I pay $US149.99 for these parts? There are 76 different elements, none are new or rare, and the total count is 1,210 pieces.