Walk around any major city and you’ll see people looking up at the buildings and admiring the architecture that surrounds them. Buildings of all shapes and sizes capture the imagination of those that look up at them. LEGO has even put out an architecture line to capture many of these famous buildings in their tiny plastic bricks, so it made sense for No Starch books to put out The LEGO Architect by Tom Alphin.
For those of us who are not familiar with different architectural styles, the book is broken up into chapters based on different styles. Neoclassical, art deco, and post modernism are just a few examples of the seven different architectural styles explored in the book. Each chapter opens with an explanation of the style followed by an explanation of how the style can work with LEGO building. The explanations are shown with pictures of actual buildings, which is then followed by LEGO creations that are in the same style.
Each chapter has at least one LEGO creation for the reader to build. Each building has a clear set of instructions that are easy to follow and give the builder an insight into the building style. All of the instructions are shown with clear or white brick to keep the instructions easy to read, but leave the builder the ability to substitute color in themselves to make the buildings their own.
The final chapter of the book gives tips for the reader to design their own buildings. Through building examples and examples of buildings built by others, the reader can gain a deeper understanding of how architecture works and how to design their own in either existing or their own styles.
While I am constantly amazed and impressed by the buildings people make out of LEGO, my personal building style ascribes to the Tom Hanks view of the transforming building in the Big. I found the book very informative and may be inspired to design and create my own unique buildings based on the lessons from The LEGO Architect.
