Steampunk is such an interesting and unique subgenre of science fiction, inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk imagines a world where steam power remains in mainstream usage, along with retro-futuristic technologies, and Victorian era lifestyle and fashion. While steampunk-inspired LEGO creations are not as common as models based on other forms of sci-fi, when talented LEGO fans do decide to build them, they are almost always extremely impressive. 🙂
LEGO’s color-palette and parts-selection are perfect for building steampunk-style creations. In the world of steampunk, shades of brown are often used, along with rich but muted colors, highlighted with antique-gold and brass. And there is also an abundant usage of gears, pipes, and other greebly bits, to represent advanced steam-powered technology. Artificial limbs and other mechanical body enhancements are common, and are worn along with British Victorian or American Wild West style clothing – all of this is available in LEGO as well.
In fact, LEGO themselves released several steampunk-inspired sets, including the #70807 LEGO MetalBeard’s Duel and the #70810 LEGO MetalBeard’s Sea Cow from The LEGO Movie collection, the majority of the LEGO Ninjago Skybound sets from 2016, the LEGO Monster Fighters sets from 2012, some of the sets from the LEGO Nexo Knights theme, and LEGO Master Builder Academy had an entire level dedicated to steampunk.
I regularly search for steampunk-style builds from LEGO fans, because they are quite fascinating. The combination of rich colors and advanced technology looks really good in LEGO (instead of yet another gray ship – something that has been plaguing Star Wars and other more commonly used sci-fi styles). We have featured a number of steampunk creations here in the past (see links at the end of this post), and today I wanted to show you an entire steampunk city that is built by LEGO fans Castor Troy and domino39 (all pictures shared in this post are by them).
This LEGO steampunk city is titled Paris 1889. It depicts France in an alternate past, where everything is based on a scientific approach, including engineering, mathematics, physics and chemistry. While traditional religions have been abolished, the new “gods” are Newton, Tesla, Edison, Jules Verne and the like. However, parallel to the scientific advancements there is also great suffering; continual wars against vampires, rampant drug abuse, and an ever-growing gap between social and economic classes. Here, I’m sharing a few pictures from the overall layout so you get a sense of the size and scope of the project, and you can see larger and more detailed pictures at the flickr galleries of Castor Troy and domino39.
If you have never built any steampunk creations, but would like to give it a try, I recommend starting with this Wikipedia page to familiarize yourself with the style. For the main colors choose browns, grays and gold or copper, and for accent colors dark-blue, dark-green, dark-red, and dark-orange work well. Remember that all steampunk vehicles supposed to be powered by steam, so check out pictures of steam-powered machinery. They always have interesting gears, gauges, and piping. For minifigs use top hats, mechanically enhanced body parts, goggles, and timepieces. You can find plenty of pictures of steampunk-inspired fashion online, and there are good choices for minifig parts in official LEGO sets to make them.
So what do you think? How do you like this LEGO steampunk version of Paris? Did you ever build anything in steampunk style? Are there any other LEGO steampunk creations that you really like? Feel free to share in the comment section below! 😉
And you might also like to check out the following related posts:
