If we scale it by height, a historically accurate building of this set should take you approximately 200 days.

12000 pieces over 200 days, means about 60 pieces per day. I'd say that is a reasonable about actually.

So the set supposedly is going to be built with the same progression as the real thing -- the parts of the basilica that were built first in real life are also the first parts of building the Lego set.

So I kinda wonder, what is the scaling like if you account for the actual build phases. How many pieces would you have to do on each of those 200 days to match the real-life progress of the basilica.

Don't forget to include time to handle lawsuits and funding delays! Also, someone may break into your house and rip up the instruction book.

Because it doesn't appear to either be designed at a consistent scale or be a solid rectangular cuboid making volume feel like an even less accurate basis for my silly joke.

The shape doesn't matter for the scaling as long as it is a 3-dimensional object that is scaled in all directions.

And I think for the actual value you get, scaling by volume would actually be more accurate.

The original took 144 years to build, and this model is anywhere between 153 to 278 times smaller. If one were to scale by volume, the build time would take at most 22 minutes, and at least 3.

I think scaling linearly works better here

Once built, what does one do with this? Generally, these are fragile in the sense that moving them can cause parts of it to become disconnected or fall apart so you don't want to be moving it around to much. It's going to take up a whole lot of space. Your kids can't actually play with it. And if you intend to show it off, you aren't really showing any real skills except for the ability to follow pages and pages of instructions. I don't even want to think about what would be involved in disassembling it such that it could be rebuilt per the instructions.

In Germany there is a Lego subscription service.

Put sets on a wishlist, they send you one of them. You build it, unbuild it and send it back. One set a month.

I feel like if I were just a little deeper on the Autism Spectrum I would really like Germany.

that sounds awesome. sad that something like that probably would not work well in USA. don't have the culture for it. too many pieces would get lost.

Why do people put up flowers? No skill (I think...?) involved in getting a bouquet and putting it a vase on a table. Or buying (not creating) art. Some people just like the look and it;'s hard to argue about taste.

If people have a Lego set on display, that is surely a conversation starter for me. Especially if it's a ginormous Minas Tirith or Sagrada Familia set, or an old Technic set.

Not for everyone I suppose.

My wife took on building the plant inspired lego sets several months ago. They are OK in that they don't look that ugly scattered around the house. I like it because it is a hobby she enjoys a lot and it makes it easier for me to buy "the right" gifts haha.

I've never had the patience to build those. I think I have PTSD from my childhood, when my dat bought us a "cheap" brand of lego-like toys (called TENTE I think) for which the bottom pieces fell as you plugged the top pieces.

For me, when I was into legos, the answer would be: take it apart and add the pieces to my larger collection, from which I can build whatever I want.

Me too. Reminds me of the Milton Jones joke:

When I was younger, I used to own a zoo, and a pirate ship....

Though not at the same time. We couldn't afford that much lego.

when you were into Legos, the bricks used were of universal shape. modern sets like this are mostly of a shape that is highly specific to the intended outcome. which is basically orthogonal to the original appeal of playing with Lego. I'm saying that as someone who grew up with two large boxes full of Lego bricks and pieces.

This is actually not particularly true. In fact, the problem of unique pieces almost ended up sinking Lego because they were spending so much on molds and manufacturing of a single piece that was only used in one set. If the set didn't sell well, Lego could potentially lose money on the set overall because of all the tooling costs.

Back in the aughts, they redid their philosophy of having large single-purpose pieces and went to having those large pieces be replaced by subassemblies of much smaller pieces that were much more general purpose. That's when SNOT became huge in Lego's official sets.

As someone with multiple decades of experience with Lego, things now are much much better than they were back in the 90's and early aughts specifically because of this pivot that Lego did. There is something to be said about part count inflation, and how many of the parts nowadays are tiny little pieces rather than the big 2x2 or 2x4 bricks. And also, some sets and some themes do require their unique pieces. Friends has their little minifigures that are different from the standard minifigs. The Mario sets might need to have some specific pieces -- there's no standard 'mario mustache' tile. But overall, Lego has done a pretty incredible job of increasing the utility and decreasing the single-use aspect of many pieces.

With a lot of the adult-oriented sets (ICONS and others), especially anything plant-based, they go out of their way to point out how they're using existing pieces in an unusual way. One example is the cherry blossoms on the bonsai tree are actually frogs, but cast in a pink color for the first time, called out in the instruction manual as you're building it.

I love it, knowing about these little details. Also fun to share with friends that inquire about the various LEGO on display in the house. This, and all the fancy mechanics (e.g. typewriter, nintendo), engender a ton of respect and awe for the designers.

I've talked with a Lego designer before, and for some themes they're not allowed to even request new molds. Even new colors of existing pieces can be contentious. My own head canon about the bonsai set is that the reason they made such a big fuss about having the recolored frogs is because it probably was a big fuss internally too. "Who'd ever need pink frogs?" sort of thing.

Just put it up for display. Me and my wife built several sets just to have an activity to do together, and then the resulting displays are memories of those fun times.

you don't build with legos expecting it to not fall apart. it's kind of the whole point, really...

why do Buddhists make intricate sand sculptures only to rake them over when they're done?

Enjoy its presence. If that doesn’t sound like something you’d enjoy, then it’s not the right set for you. Not something I’d ever buy, but I’m sure many will.

With that said, as someone who put together the Big Ben set back in the day and had raw fingers for a week after, I have a somewhat PTSD-like reaction to this set. It looks like there are going to be a lot of steps dealing with making many of a subassembly that is itself made out of a bunch of tiny pieces that you need to make sure line up well.

These days I much prefer the large Technic theme sets because they are not so repetitive and require a deeper immersion to actually complete; harder to just space out while building the set. Certainly more meditative for me.

All that is to say that if you're going to consider this set, be aware that the build experience might not be the level of fun that the part count seems to indicate.

> Your kids can't actually play with it.

Good luck to anyone who builds a lego set and then tries to tell my kids we can't play with it or steal parts from it for another build.

LEGO has a wide audience. Some of these go to adults who build them and put them on display. Others will go to kids who build them and then take them apart to build the next thing.

I wouldn't buy this huge set for my kids because that price tag is crazy, but I like buying some of the mid-size sets for them because it's a nice injection of specialty pieces that they like to incorporate into other builds.

> I wouldn't buy this huge set for my kids because that price tag is crazy, but I like buying some of the mid-size sets for them because it's a nice injection of specialty pieces that they like to incorporate into other builds.

Very well said, and this was exactly my experience (as a child).

What's the point of a colouring book? Once you've coloured your drawing you can't do anything with it. You can display it but you're not showing any real skill.

^ bizarre thought process tbh. Both building it and displaying it is fun. That's all.

I genuinely think there are people who don’t “get” hobbies or, if they do, don’t get that other people might like hobbies other than the ones they like. As you say, the point is to enjoy it and that’s all.

Coloring books give you some freedom; to pick your own colors and texture. If we were to draw an analogy, it would be using the LEGO pieces in this kit to build something else. But nobody is going to do that, so it is like a color-by-numbers book, which exercises little creativity. It's a mindless activity to pass the time.

People treat giant lego sets the same way they treat other complex model sets, it’s not really for disassembling as much as it is for the fun of building and then having / being proud of, I guess, mostly. I mean you can never really speak for everyone but generally speaking.

When I was a kid I used to spend entire days building and creating new stuff once I built the designs from the booklets.

Today when I see a Lego kit is kind of another toy: is designed to build one and only one design, compared to the generic kits that were sold and also popular many years ago.

All these new kits pieces are just to accomplish one build. The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone.

My kids have a ton of legos, it's their favorite thing. However, and this is the important part: you have to let go of the concept of a set.

Keep new assembled kits out, let them play with it as built from the instructions. But then as it falls apart with play, and the kids don't fix it the same way it was originally built, it eventually goes into a big box of former kits that are all jumbled together.

We did this, and without prompting to do so, the kids started building their own things out of the box, exactly as you did with your kits.

You just have to learn to let go of the set, and it becomes exactly what you want.

Edit: I'm not sure if a $800 set has that same property, but for the everyday $5-$40 sets, absolutely treat them as temporary collections, and life is great.

I have an anecdote about doing exactly that. Always was a LEGO kid (first set I got was bought 3 months before I was born) and slowly over time collected a giant bin of pieces from all the various sets. Now as a much older adult, I actually find myself going back to that bin on occasion to sort out the parts and try to rebuild the sets. Much like how that big bin of parts let me build stuff from my imagination when I was younger, as a form of therapy, now resorting those pieces and reorganizing them is a new form of therapy for myself, and it all comes from the same toy.

I find it particularly endearing how a single system of toys can provide decades of experiences to a single human. I don't think I've ever encountered another toy that is like that on such a massive scale. Yes there's other construction toys out there that strive to do the same, Knex was another one that I was into for a while, but there's nothing that quite scratches that same itch that Lego does.

This is exactly how it happens at my house. I purposely stick to to the $20-$40 boxes for this reason. Over $100, that's not a toy anymore for me. That price range becomes a collectors figurine.

Yes. I got somewhat stuck on the idea of the sets being kept together, partly because I thought it would be good to pass on used ones with the manuals.

But I found that if the builds are out they will be played with and fall apart and eventually become loose legos and that’s all fine and good.

Loose Legos on the floor making random things is fun. But building with sets and instructions is a different skill set and is entertaining in its own right.

The newer Friends series has a short reward video at the end of some builds which sort of puts the cherry on top of the set builds.

Yes this, I bought sets like the Arctic Ship and police bases thinking they'd be like dioramas. They quickly became components that they build other things on top of. It took some time to mentally un-anchor from the $500 spent on the sets lol.

> When I was a kid I used to spend entire days building and creating new stuff once I built the designs from the booklets.

Kids still do this.

I don't know why this idea persists. There have always been sets with custom pieces. My kids go crazy over the custom pieces because it sparks new ideas for their other builds. My kids know every custom piece from every set they've ever built and will describe them in great detail so we can search through the bin until we find it.

> The Lego spirit of ever combining and creating with same pieces over and over again is gone

For you, maybe. The kids are still doing this and having a great time.

A lot of the Lego builds we did when my son was little was exactly this: A set would spark an idea and there'd be endless castles that started with piece of a castle set but went in totally different directions and incorporated all kinds of other stuff, for example.

I can't but help think that people who assume that the big sets take away that haven't touched Lego in decades.

My sons sets got built "to spec" once, got played with like that for a few hours, and then never looked the same again ever, even though we still have the manuals in a box somewhere.

That's borderline crazy, lego is meant to go into a big box/bag/container and be mixed so you use your own imagination to create your own stuff, like the lego gods intended. Ideally also passed down generations/between relatives, so you can visit your nieces and nephews in the future and recognize pieces you once received from some cousin or something.

Did the parents grow up with Lego? The "each set stays in its own bag" thing was what my wife wanted to do for the longest time, not having grown up with the beautiful chaos of a giant tub of pieces, and the oddly reassuring sound of swishing your hand through all of it.

Weird perspective. When I was a kid (I'm 41) we were given sets - pirate ship, submarine, police sets. They were designed as a kit... and once we built the kid we'd pull it apart and use the parts for all sorts of things. Now my kids do they very same thing with modern kits. I'm not sure why you think today's lego is different?

That seems to be somewhat of an exaggeration. These $800 models are obviously not for kids. The creativity is still alive in the price brackets that aren't targeting collectors. Custom builds that involve scavenging other kits for pieces still go viral pretty often.

I'm not very tapped into it, but last month I saw a DIY Lego Rocky from Project Hail Mary going viral. I think this week I saw a very detailed jellyfish model doing the rounds.

All new kits? Gone? I'm not so sure about that. I don't think the target audience of an $800 kit is a 10 year old, sure. There are still plenty of kits at the $100ish and below price range that are targeted for that sort of play.

There's a recurring theme on the Lego subreddit where people build the millennium falcon out of any arbitrary lego set, so the spirit is not COMPLETELY dead, fwiw

There was a period that was very true when Ninjago were a thing. But in the last decade while they sometimes still come out with new pieces there is still a tonne of reusability and creativity in Lego pieces.

I mean yes, there are kits like this that are clearly meant for one kind of build, but nothing stops someone from just getting bulk kits or taking apart other sets? There's lots of other stuff on their catalogue which look just like the stuff I grew up with.

I swear every lego-related post you see people dooming about this when all they look at are the giant sets clearly targeted towards adults that _want_ this sort of thing and not the plethora of other stuff.

You can still buy bulk Legos to mix and match from Lego. And similarly pricey and collector oriented Lego sets existed 20 and 30 years ago as well.

Legos releasing single build sets that are clearly targeted for adults (look at the 18+ age statement) does nothing to harm you - it's targeted a different consumer demographic.

It's like Taco Bells now serving alcohol or Costcos now selling Asian groceries. Companies will not stay stagnant and will look at additional opportunities to expand to new buyer demographics.

Exactly, and like, if one literally looks up "Lego catalogue" and actually read it you'll get a bunch of sets - even the brand tie-ins, which aren't new at all - and these are basically the same types of sets I grew up with and would happily build and then take apart as a kid to do other stuff with...

Lego also has "3-in-1" sets that come with dedicated instructions to build different possible configurations out of the exact same pieces, which seem like a cool way to encourage kids (or anyone :P) to then veer off into their own building experiments.

There were also two 20-in-1 sets recently, both very reasonably priced. Those were huge hits in my house.

Same here much to my parents chagrin - they thought buying me Lego sets would teach me to follow written instructions but joke's on them.

I normally love Lego's interpretation of various real architectural works but I don't believe there is enough detail here to really capture the unique style of Gaudi's design.

They're doing the best they can given the budget and size constraints. The set has to simultaneously be interesting and not tedious to build, cost a somewhat reasonable amount, not be too huge that no one can display or even reasonably build it at home, and able to closely enough replicate what they're trying to model.

Could they make a bigger version of this set that is more closely resembling the real thing? More than likely, yeah they can; look at the displays they have at Legoland. But would that more detailed version be accessible for even the well off AFOL? Most likely not. It'd be too big, too expensive, and too unwieldy, and will probably still fail to capture some of the details of the real thing.

They just finished the final tower after 144 years, although there is still another decade of (finishing?) work remaining.

People are apparently willing to pay a premium for older Lego sets, provided the original packaging is still intact.

Older sets are offered and sold on eBay for substantially more oney that they cost when originally sold.

What's the smallest 360deg camera? Would it be possible to create a virtual tour of the inside of this model with such a camera?

Would interesting to use a quest and take a tour of the insides.

On the other hand, crafts like knitting and other fiber arts can be very repetitive and people still enjoy them.

(Personally, I've also enjoyed unit origami, which involves folding the same module many times over and assembling them.)

I'm sad that the building instructions link doesn't work. I'd love to see them.

but the people buying has not had their purchasing power keep up, demographic have shifted entirely over the years

Pantasy, Cobi, Funwhole, megabloks, etc. There's tons of alt bricks at nearly any reasonable price point. But you're still not going to find these sorts of multi-thousand piece sets for <$100 because it takes at least a few cents to produce a dimensionally accurate, quality controlled bit of plastic.

But thats because they limit production to control prices, producing mass volume accurate plastic was never the bottleneck.

These are remarkably close to the raw cost of materials and tooling. The Sagrada Familia model is a 12k piece set for $800, ~$0.07/piece. Phantasy has an unlicensed Opera set (85019) [0] with 3.5k pieces for $190, $0.05/piece. That's straight up cheap. They're not limiting production to control prices. High quality injection molding (in multiple colors no less!) is hard. 2 cents over 12k pieces does add up to a nice bit of change for Lego though.

[0] https://pantasy.com/products/pantasy-the-opera-85019

There are cheaper alternatives. People still generally prefer Lego.

Also, is this one even that expensive? It's only 6 cents per piece.

What they really should have done is sell the kit in 7 stages, each for $99 each, such that you can slowly build it as you can budget money for the construction. :)

(This is how the Sagrada Família was built in case folks don't know its history)

That would actually be really cool if each stage of the build reflected the actual construction history

I’ll never get Lego. Assembling a plastic premade model, with full instructions to get a blocky pixelated representation of the final thing. It just feels so tacky, it has no gravitas.

That being said, I love Lego as a company and wish them all the success.

To all North Americans. The singular of Lego is Lego. The plural of Lego is .. Lego.

It's like sheep. Legos is a mis--spelled City in Nigeria.

And how many of these 12,060 pieces are tiny pieces?

Maybe it’s time to add the weight and the stud count

Looking forward to the expansion pack(s) for when they finish building the real cathedral

So, fun trick with sets like these, that are in the more 'professional' space of Lego is that most of the time, these sets are very open ended because they only provide you a bunch of common pieces. Which you can buy yourself.

Bricklink has a wonderful feature that you can take a set and then part it out into a wanted list, and then search seller inventory to find those parts. That's how I built that giant Imperial Star Destroyer set from the aughts for a little over $200 instead of the like $1000 that used copies of the set were going for at that time (it's probably even more now.)

Just for funsies, I looked it up, and you can get the whole 21050 set for about $150 now on bricklink, which is a pretty good $/psc price. Considering what the set is, and the lack of stickers, means it should be easy to wash a used set to get all the pieces nice and clean; a laundry bra bag with a fine mesh works great for this.