Continuing the blog posts by Fionn Stephens (the in house TY student) this concluding post (forming the trilogy) shows a new architectural specific modelling system by toy leaders Lego.

[Read the previous post on the FoamWerks V-cutter HERE and the review of the Arckit system HERE

Here’s what Fionn had to say:

“I am a huge fan of Lego, I have been since I was able able to throw one brick onto another one. But sadly I have come to an age where I told myself that I should stop playing with Lego. [Editor’s note: You’re never too old for Lego!]. For some people that age never comes, you can now buy Lego for adults: models of famous buildings such as Le Louvre, The White House and Big Ben. All of which you painstakingly put together over hours of “fun”, and leave on a mantle piece to never touch again.

The architectural range of Lego has a new product; the Lego Architectural Studio is designed for architects in mind, in the box all the pieces are white, getting rid of the bold primary colours Lego is famous for. There are no instructions, instead you get a 272 page manual which acts like a text book for an architectural course. There are also no mini-figures (the yellow men) inside the set, leaving you free to create to any scale you like. In the manual is says that a single block could be a bench, a house or a whole block of skyscrapers. The scale is in the eye of the maker.

I was never one to follow instructions, I usually threw them away and created what I wanted, so this set suits me well. In the box you get 1,200 brick of various sizes, including what you would expect from Lego and many others which you wouldn’t.

Lego Architectural Studio will experience fierce competition from Arckit – which I have also revised HERE. The advantage of Lego is that many Architects will already feel comfortable with it. There are several differences between Arckit and Lego, the main one being that Lego is based on using bricks and Arckit is based on using walls. Using Lego you use several bricks to make one wall, whilst in Arckit each wall is ready made.This means that Arckit is arguably quicker to use. It also means that the scale of Arckit is fixed while the scale of Lego is anything but fixed.

Which is better will depend on your own preference, but the real question is whether Architects will use any of these sets or stick to the tried and tested foamboard. Is it worth £150 for essentially ordinary Lego brick dressed in white?

Whether or not this set is useful to Architects it will certainly be adored by Lego’s army of loyal fans. This is not a set to leave on your mantle piece to show off to people, it is a set to be made and broken up many times, which is ideally what Lego is designed for.”

Images courtesy of lego.com