Building Gaudi, brick by brick
For those devoted to puzzles, a challenge in three-dimension from toymakers in Billund, Denmark.
Here is a staycation for anyone with the concentration of a medieval craftsman. Lego’s new Sagrada Família contains 12,060 pieces, making it the largest and most complicated set the company has produced.
Why it matters: Antoni Gaudí’s basilica is among the world’s most astonishing buildings: part cathedral, part fever dream and still emerging after nearly a century and a half. The exterior has just been completed; the interior will be finished in 2034.
Visitors cross oceans to see it. It’s not an obvious candidate for reduction to small plastic pieces. Lego has managed it anyway.
The details: The set costs $800, roughly the price of two weekday nights at the Windsor Court in New Orleans during the suffocating heat of summer.
Still, it is cheaper than flying to Barcelona, where visitors must contend with crowds and locals convinced, not entirely without reason, of their superiority to Madrid.
The model reproduces the basilica’s towers, sculpted façades and peculiar organic geometry, which make the building appear less constructed than grown.
What they’re saying: Rok Žgalin Kobe, the set’s designer, said his team felt “an immense responsibility” to do justice to Gaudí’s masterpiece.
The bottom line: A cathedral nearly 150 years in the making, completed on your dining-room table by Sunday night. Drinks optional.
