How worried should we be about the 12,000-piece LEGO Architecture set?

A 12,000-piece LEGO Architecture rumour doing the rounds is equal parts exciting and daunting – but how worried should we be?

LEGO Architecture 21065 Sagrada Familia is rumoured to be on its way this summer, said to be made up of over 12,000 pieces. That's far from confirmed just yet, so we'll need to wait for official confirmation from the LEGO Group before we know for sure if it's on the way.

If it is true, however, 12,000 pieces and all, and LEGO Architecture fans have a mighty build on the way. It would be the biggest LEGO set ever – and is that exciting or daunting? After all, some enormous LEGO builds end up being more tedious than rewarding. Could purchasing this set be signing up to the worst experience ever?

We returned to some LEGO Architecture reviews of the past to help map what we might be able to expect from 21065 Sagrada Familia. Spoiler alert: there's more positives than negatives.

"The bad?" wrote Chris while reviewing 21056 Taj Mahal back in 2021. "Well, unfortunately it’s pretty much all based around the same construction problems that afflicted 10189 Taj Mahal, in that you just can’t avoid the repetition any model of Mughal architecture – which is symmetrical by nature – would entail."

The upside for 21065 Sagrada Familia is that hopefully its nature-focused architectural style might mean that there's less repetition. While it feels perhaps too much to hope for to say no step would be repeated in the LEGO Architecture set, the non-linear, non-symmetrical nature of the real-life cathedral means that there'll be less of that than in the famously repetitive Mughal style of the Taj Mahal.

Something that the LEGO Architecture theme has done well on a few occasions is using an inevitably lengthy build to tell a story. We've seen it on a subtle level in sets like 21063 Neuschwanstein Castle, a set that weaves the personality of the building's real-life designer into its build.

"The build captures the same distracted, flitting approach that the castle’s real-life royal designer had," I wrote in my own review of 21063 Neuschwanstein Castle last year. "King Ludwig of Bavaria, who paid for the castle’s construction when it began back in 1869, had exacting tastes and a passion for architecture. He was determined to weave in the best modern architectural styles, seeking inspiration from across Europe and changing his mind often. So often, in fact, that he never saw the castle completed before he died.

"It was finished to a simplified level after his death in 1886, but even that ‘simple’ conclusion leaves a sprawling palace with incredible detail inside and out. That’s felt in the intricacies of the LEGO Architecture set. You build different sections and layers as smaller side builds, slotting them into place as you move up and down the brick-built mountainside. You rarely stay in the same place for longer than one or two sections, reflecting the manner in which Ludwig designed the real structure."

Similarly, 21061 Notre-Dame de Paris uses storytelling in its construction, this time in a much more explicit way.

"21061 Notre-Dame de Paris is made up of an impressive 4,383 pieces, making it one of the more complex builds in the LEGO Group’s current catalogue," wrote Matthew in his review of the Parisian-inspired Architecture LEGO set. "This is a tremendously dense build, with lots of small pieces coming together in a small space to create an unprecedented level of detail on a set of this size."

That description sounds remarkably like what you might expect from the rumoured 21065 Sagrada Familia, which would also be inspired by a cathedral and feature a wealth of minute details that need translating into LEGO form. However, those tiny details did not lead Matthew to label the build boring.

"Notre-Dame has its moments of repetition, but given just how many identical details need to be constructed, it never feels quite as egregious as in some other architecture-inspired sets," Matthew continued. "Towards the end, some of the repeated details can become a little tiresome, but the LEGO Group has stumbled across an impressive way of keeping this from feeling overwhelming throughout the bulk of the build."

He goes on to highlight the LEGO Group's tactic of splitting 21061 Notre-Dame de Paris into four separate time periods from real history: 1163 to 1182, 1182 to 1200, 1200 to 1225 and 1225 to 1786. Each build section takes around two hours to complete, meaning the builders put the set together in the same order that the real Notre-Dame was constructed.

Not only does this provide history buffs with an insight into the building’s progress in the real world, but it also offers natural building breaks in what could otherwise become tedious.

If past lessons from these three LEGO Architecture sets are anything to go by, perhaps we don't need to be too worried about the rumoured 21065 Sagrada Familia's 12,000-piece count. Judging from the theme's track record, if there's any team that can make such a mighty build far from repetitive, it's LEGO Architecture.

Thank you for supporting the work that Brick Fanatics does by buying your LEGO sets using our affiliate links!