Rebuilding V&A Dundee in LEGO: Two Months of Late Nights, Curves, and One Near-Disaster

(Written by Brian McNicoll)

Designed by internationally renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, V&A Dundee opened in 2018 on Dundee’s waterfront. As the first Victoria and Albert Museum outside London, it brought one of the world’s most recognized cultural institutions to Scotland. Its extraordinary form was inspired by the dramatic cliffs of Scotland’s east coast, creating a building that is rooted in the Scottish landscape while connecting Dundee with the wider world.

I’m from Dundee, and this is my favorite building in the world. V&A Dundee represents much more than a museum to me. It has helped transform Dundee’s waterfront, strengthened the city’s international reputation for design, and become a symbol of the city’s creative ambition. As a Dundonian and a Scot, I wanted to capture that story in LEGO form.

Around Christmas, I found myself thinking constantly about one building. The problem was that the more I looked at it, the less I could imagine how anyone could build it convincingly in LEGO.

It has enormous cantilevers, twisting walls, thousands of horizontal concrete panels, and two main forms that are probably best described as upside-down pyramids. Almost nothing about it seemed naturally suited to LEGO bricks. So, naturally, I decided to try…

Starting with the Façade

I didn’t begin with a complete plan, a predetermined scale or a target number of pieces. I simply experimented.

The first challenge was the part that gives V&A Dundee so much of its character: the horizontal precast concrete panels that wrap around the building. My first instinct was to overlap LEGO plates by one stud to create that layered effect. It looked wrong almost immediately.

The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to reproduce every physical overlap literally and concentrated instead on how the façade felt when you looked at it. I kept the layers much more flush and started alternating different shades of white and grey. Suddenly it began to look like V&A Dundee.

That became an important lesson throughout the build. Sometimes reproducing architecture in LEGO isn’t about making a mathematically perfect miniature. It is about finding the combination of shape, colour, depth and shadow that makes your eye recognise the original building.

There was never really a first version of the model. It gradually crystallised. I developed the west elevation first, and once I was happy with its proportions, that effectively determined the scale of everything else. Even the height emerged from studying the number and spacing of the layers on the real building. Eventually the completed model grew to around 2,900 pieces.

A 3D Jigsaw Puzzle

Photographs of V&A Dundee are slightly deceptive. From the classic waterfront viewpoint, the building can appear almost straightforward. It isn’t. Once you begin rotating around it, the geometry changes constantly.

Fortunately, a Dundee Waterfront mobile app contained a 3D model of the museum based on official city plans. That became one of my most useful tools. I could sit with my phone beside the LEGO model, rotate the digital building, zoom into a particular corner and compare the lines and angles directly.

I would still visit V&A Dundee and take photographs when there was something I couldn’t understand, but being able to pan, tilt and zoom around the complete building made an enormous difference. Without it, I honestly think recreating the museum accurately from photographs alone would have been virtually impossible.

The process also made me appreciate Kuma’s architecture much more. Things that you barely notice when walking past the real building suddenly become important when you have to construct them yourself.

A small change of angle affects everything above it. A section that appears decorative from outside might actually be helping define the entire geometry.

And the huge river-facing cantilever, which looks effortless on the real museum, suddenly becomes an engineering problem when your own version has to project a surprisingly long way beyond its supports.

By the end, building V&A Dundee felt like solving a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

When the Solution Came in a Dream

The hardest pieces of the model were two curved, wave-like sections towards the rear of the building. For quite a while, I couldn’t make them work.

LEGO naturally wants to give you straight lines and clean connections. These sections needed to twist and fan out while still appearing structurally connected. I tried several approaches and kept getting nowhere.

By this point I had become fairly obsessed with the project. I was building virtually every night once my children were asleep, often continuing beyond midnight. Apparently my brain wasn’t stopping when I went to bed either. One night I dreamed about the problem. When I woke up, I had an idea…

I created a series of narrow plate sections with tiles on top, but instead of locking every section tightly together, I retained individual stud connections at particular points.

That gave each section just enough movement. I could twist them slightly and gradually fan them away from each other. I tried it almost immediately after waking up. It worked. Those curves are now some of my favourite parts of the entire model.

If the project ever progressed to the point where LEGO designers were developing it further, that is one area I would be particularly fascinated to see them tackle. I’m certain there are techniques and elements available to professional LEGO designers that could take the effect much further.

Two Months of Late Nights

In total, the model took roughly two months of very concentrated building. That meant almost every evening. Once the kids were in bed, I would start again. Then I would look at the clock and discover it was after midnight.

For those two months, it completely occupied my spare mental capacity. Every time I solved one problem, another appeared. But each solution also made the model look a little more like the real V&A, which made it difficult to stop.

A surprising amount of the time wasn’t spent constructing anything. It was spent looking for bricks. I was working from my own collection, so finding one particular plate, bracket or tile in the right shade could become a project in itself.

It made me appreciate how extraordinary the LEGO design environment in Billund must be. The idea of having access to drawers containing practically every available element sounds like a builder’s dream after spending an evening looking for one grey piece you know you own somewhere.

And Then I Dropped It

Because I have young children, I didn’t want to leave a large unfinished LEGO building sitting somewhere inviting. Every evening I would carefully move it to the basement. That worked perfectly until the evening when I dropped it myself. Two or three complete elevations collapsed. I was extremely close to giving up.

I remember looking at the pieces and knowing that getting angry wasn’t going to rebuild anything. If I had been younger, I suspect I might have tried to repair everything immediately, become more frustrated and eventually abandoned it. Instead, I picked up all the pieces, put them into a box and walked away for the night. The next morning, I started again. I’m very glad I did…

Seeing the Architecture Differently

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most since finishing the model is watching how people interact with it at LEGO shows. People often assume it is already an official set. They’ll ask where I bought it or whether I followed instructions.

When I explain that there weren’t any instructions and that I designed the model myself, some people take a moment to understand what I mean.

Children tend to discover one feature immediately. They crouch down and look straight through the middle of the building. The real V&A Dundee has a dramatic passage between its two main forms, and the LEGO version allows you to look from one side and see somebody looking back from the other.

Another perspective people rarely see is from above. Most photographs of V&A Dundee are taken from around ground level. Looking down onto the LEGO model reveals the footprint and relationship between the two main volumes in a completely different way.

That is perhaps the biggest thing this project has taught me. Before building V&A Dundee, I loved the building as a piece of architecture. After spending two months rebuilding it plate by plate, I understand it differently.

LEGO forces you to reverse-engineer architecture. You have to understand why an angle exists, what supports a cantilever, how two volumes intersect, and what gives a façade its rhythm.

You’re not simply making a small copy. You’re trying to understand the decisions somebody else made and then finding an entirely different construction language to express them.

From Dundee to LEGO Ideas

I eventually submitted the model to LEGO Ideas, where it has now passed 3,000 supporters and received a LEGO Ideas Staff Pick. Kengo Kuma has personally backed the project, and the campaign has also begun reaching audiences in Japan. The target is 10,000, which would qualify the project for LEGO’s official review process.

One of the most enjoyable aspects has been discovering the LEGO Ideas community itself. The internet isn’t always a particularly positive place, but LEGO Ideas often feels remarkably different. People encourage builders, ask questions about techniques, and genuinely seem to want other people’s creations to succeed.

Whatever happens next, building the model has already changed the way I look at both LEGO and architecture. But I would certainly love to find out what professional LEGO designers could do with V&A Dundee. And preferably, next time, without dropping it.

The V&A Dundee project is currently displayed in the real museum, so if you’re nearby, you’re welcome to check it out in person. And if you would like to help turn this Scottish landmark into an official LEGO set, please support it at the link below:

Thank you for taking the time to read about my project! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to share below! Thanks again!