Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water in Legos

Most of us would love to have a piece of architectural brilliance to call our own. Matija Grguric now has two, although they are made of Legos. We featured Matija's version of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye a couple of years ago. Now, Matija is back with an amazing rendition of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water.

For those of you that may be quick to dismiss something created out of Legos, here's Matija's description of the work and planning involved:

I've had thoughts about this project since I've built Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye. I finally made up my mind in September 2009. when I began planning and working on some early designs. Scale of the building is minifig, or approximate 1:40. One of the issues was how to make the stone walls of the building. The result here is made out of 4 different shades of grey (old grey and bley). Other was the terrain and vegetation. In the end I decided to make it in winter atmosphere. Snow is something I always enjoy, and I was always more of a winter type of person, so here it is - my first snowy MOC (my own creation). :)

Building process spread over total of almost 7 months, and the structure is made out of more than 15000 bricks (just an approximate guess). It is placed on 6 48*48 baseplates, and measures 115 x 80 x 50 cm. It weights more than 20 kg. This MOC will be displayed in Technical Museum in Zagreb on "Kockice EXPO 2010", in May and June this year.

To see more images of Matija's sculpture that has been seven months in the making, visit his Flickr set: Fallingwater.

(Image credits: Matija Grguric)

Comments (15)

Wow, this is amazing. So much detail. I don't think I would have had the patience!

Holy guacamole!!! That's great.

Oh come on, at least get the basics right... LEGO.

This is amazing - and interesting that Matija chose to render the house in it's original incarnation: Before the additions of the guest-house bridge and the servants sitting room beneath the West Terrace...

The plural of Lego is Lego. Wakes ups peoples!

I dunno, man. Does it still count as one of the greats of mid-c architecture if it's not structurally sound? (The real version, not the Lego.)

I grew up near Fallingwater (and am related by marriage to the family for whom it was built.) I agree with Shanalulu. On my last tour of the place, I was just so disgusted by how structurally unsound it is. I don't understand how someone can be a great architect if there is no structural integrity.

Great LEGO version though. Will probably hold up better than the house itself.

This is GREAT. It reminds me of the Food Network Challenge where they had to build a famous mansion out of gingerbread.

Wow, this is great! I love how detailed it looks.

@thorndale: my sentiments exactly. A car may look cool, but if it doesn't run or the doors won't open because of the "cool" design, it's not a great car. Similarly, a great-looking house isn't great architecture if it's had to undergo major structural renovation because the architect hired engineers, didn't like their advice, fired them, did his own thing, then freaked out when his contractor slipped in additional reinforcement without permission. FLW's surface design was one thing, but the actual bones of the place (i.e. the essence of a building) were faulty and that DOES make a difference -- and most people gloss over that.

This is my favorite building in the world, and I'm nothing but disappointed with the official LEGO set of it. There's no red! The red frames on the windows are vital to the design.

THIS, though, this is freakin' art. Wonderful.

Concrete sags. FLW's use of concrete was often beyond what had been done before so, yes, 70 years later post-tensioning had to be added to address the sagging concrete. That in no way diminishes the fact that Fallingwater is a cornerstone of Modern Architecture.

Take, for instance, FLW's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo which was one of the few structures to survive the 1923 8.3 magnitude earthquake.

By today's standards, yes, many of his buildings are less than perfectly engineered but so were any other buildings from the same time. Also, how much current construction do you think will still be around in 80 years?

1. architects design the building then...
2. civil engineers are suppose to make it structurally feasible by telling the architect "change xyz, it will not stay up if you don't" or by finding new construction materials (by working with chemical engineers) to make it work

so if anyone didn't do a good job...it would probably be the engineers

and you could say that very few people in N. America live in 70 year old buildings and even fewer live in ones that don't require significant cosmetic and structural updates...