You can build most anything (not too curved) in LEGOs, but your finished product will differ somewhat from the real-life building you’re mimicking. It’s an inherent problem of the format—how do you reconcile scale, form, and building detail with the chunky imprecision of LEGO bricks?—and one rarely engaged with, let alone overcome. But then a LEGO model comes along that blows this and your brain to bits.

Today, that’s this pixelated model of Hogwarts castle from the Harry Potter films. Designed by Alice Finch, the construction recreates the entire castle complex, using some 400,000 plastic bricks to do so. Finch’s piece, which took “best in show” at the 2012 BrickCon (!), features all of the detailed nuances you’d find in a scale model. The brickwork is articulated for texture and relief, as are the roof tiles. Turrets are expertly rendered, colonnades are fully spatial, and the whole thing is even rigged with night lights. Still, the best part is inside. Click through for more.

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Can you see it?

It seems that a rising trend in architecture is actually an older trend in magic: making large things disappear. Sou Fujimoto’s plans for a tower in Taiwan takes a stab at such a feat, using porous walls that allow views of the city to penetrate through the superstructure as if it were a curtain of mesh. Now, international practice GDS Architects are setting out to build what will allegedly be the world’s first invisible tower, an observation ‘anti tower’ that will be the first design proposal for a landmark that earns its keep by essentially refusing to be a landmark. More after the break.

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