Photo essay: Berliner Arndt Schlaudraff creates intricate Lego models of Brutalist and Modernist buildings, and photographs the results for his Instagram account lego_tonic (+ slideshow).
Schlaudraff started off using Lego to construct fictitious designs, but decided to start recreating famous buildings after visiting The Bauhaus art school in Dessau, Germany.
He finds the characteristically boxy forms of Brutalist and Modernist styles particularly suitable for Lego construction, but he has also recreated iconic landmarks including the' Eiffel Tower and the UC Innovation Center by Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena.
The models are destroyed almost immediately after completion to free up enough bricks for his next project, so Schlaudraff photographs the works as a momento. In this essay written for Dezeen, he describes how lego_tonic came about:
A friend of mine posted the Lego Architecture Studio box on Facebook a year and a half ago and I thought that it was cool. Later that week, when I passed the Lego store in Berlin, I went in and bought one of the boxes.
The first models I built were not very good. I had to re-learn how to use the bricks, because the last time I has played with Lego was when I was a child.
Innovation Center UC by Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena recreated in Lego by Arndt Schlaudraff
From the very beginning I thought that I had to keep a record of my buildings. I never thought about "publishing" them on Instagra...