How Much Do You Think It Would Cost To Build Full Scale World Landmarks With LEGOs?

With the cost of modern LEGO sets, have you ever wondered how much it would cost to build a full size building out of them? ToyZone decided to calculate how many bricks you would need and the approximate cost of building full size replicas of 10 world landmarks: The Taj Mahal, The Statue of Liberty, Big Ben and the House of Parliament, The Burj Khalifa, The Eiffel Tower, The White House, The Colosseum, The Brandenburg Gate, The Old Trafford, and Disney Castle. Here’s how they did it:

Our first step was to create the scene using Studio 2.0 software, which includes a complete library of all Lego pieces, colors, shapes, patterns, and other details. We made a few changes to the official Lego instructions for the landmark sets, to make sure the scaled-up landmarks looked as close to the real things as possible.

Once we’ve built the initial 3D structure, a specialised program was used to recreate the exact coordinates that were used in photos of the real landmarks photos. This meant when we put the 3D model in our photo backdrop, it has the same position, height, depth as the original landmark.

When the model is in the right position, in our modelling software we set up the camera, lighting and base texture so they looked as similar as possible to the real structure. An artificial 3D sun was used to replicate the lights of a real photo, so that the shadows are in the right position.

Before we rendered the finished images, we wrapped the models in a texture that simulates smaller blocks, adding color to large chunks of bricks to give them that Lego look.

The cost difference is pretty remarkable, for example the Castle at Disneyworld cost an estimated $32 million to build (adjusting for inflation) while it would cost $181 million to build it out of LEGO bricks. Check out the photos below to find out what all these cost differences are.