Reducing the Size of Government LEGO-Style

Taking 3 weeks just to develop a strategy for modeling the Hungarian Parliament in microscale, Tamás dazzles our eyes with his first architectural model.

Known as Bigboy99899 on Flickr, Tamás shares some of his challenges below and provides some stats about his model. Can you guess which feature he began his design with? Read more to find out.

History

The Hungarian Parliament building was built at the end of 19th century with modern concrete structure and internal machinery but with Neo-Gothic and Neo-Renaissance external ornaments.

– Photo of the Hungarian Parliament. Photo credit: Andrew Shiva –

Design

It houses two chambers in two smaller domes, and it has a large central dome with the main staircase and entrance. Its symmetrical facade is just ashore River Danube, so its practically used entrance is located on the eastern side.

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Development

Building it in microscale (1:720) meant several challenges resulting in 3 weeks of intense development work.

– Here’s a glimpse at some of the roof technique. –

Starting Point

The basic idea was about how to make the front stairs. It was very hard to keep the exact aspect ratio of arches in main dome, while using reversed-brick technique for its ornaments.

– Tamás chose to use LEGO grates as the stairs leading into the parliament. –

Experimentation

I played around with two concurrent dome versions. Experimenting with new techniques to attach buttresses to the wall was quite a fun. I learned a lot about microscale modeling in the process.

– Perspective is everything. Here are 4 views of the landmark. –

Stats

Piece count: 2097 (with flags)

Dimensions: 52×28 studs

Scale: 1:720

Building time: about 2 weeks

Software: LDD (Lego Digital Designer)

Question: Have a question for Tamás? Now is your chance to ask! You can leave a comment by clicking here.