hello everyone fair warning I do not
speak Mandarin at all so most of my
pronunciations of proper names in this
review will be incorrect I do apologize
for that but I hope that many of you
will be able to see past that and
actually take a look at the Lego set
that I'm here to show you today this is
the latest one from the Lego
architecture skylines sub series and it
represents part of the skyline of
Shanghai China this is a much larger set
than most of the skylines have been to
date as a matter of fact it may be the
largest of them putting on a minifig
here for scale hopefully that'll help
you to understand just a little bit I
was definitely taken aback by the price
of this at first but now it makes more
sense the architecture line sets tend to
be more expensive because they can be
because they are going more towards
adult collectors then most of the sets
that Lego makes but here the size as
well and the number of pieces used is
pretty significant you'll see in some of
the detail just how many small pieces
are used here now just on the front but
also on the back and how many are
stacked up here as well I'm gonna start
on the left though with the smallest
structures in the set and in the
foreground here this represents Chenghuang Miao temple it's a shame that it
ends up being represented with so few
pieces but they were trying to keep a
pretty good relative scale between the
different buildings as they always do in
these skyline series sets and behind
that the taller structure is the Longhua
Pagoda now neither of these look
particularly great or accurate in this
tiny scale but I'm very glad that they
included them because they are very
important for the connection to the
history of the area next representing a
couple of the early 20th century western
buildings along the waterfront we have
the HSBC building here and the Customs
House and these two are actually
directly next to each other along that
waterfront in real life from a higher
angle you can see the hollowed-out plaza
space of the HSBC building and you can
also see how they integrated in an
approximation of the street and walkway
area and the
Waterfront itself there's also some
texturing around the backs of each of
these buildings so they don't look too
plain when viewed from behind next the
rear view is the clearest and best view
of the Radisson Blu Hotel
now the Lego version of this has a lot
of strong vertical striations but I
think that's broken up a little bit with
the visible studs behind these grille
pieces in grey especially with their
shadows it helps to introduce a little
bit of the horizontal line and kind of
horizontal break up to show the
different floors and their windows a
little bit better here's how that looks
from the front so it's partially
obscured but you can see it down to the
base down to the ground level from some
angles next up is the Oriental Pearl
Tower which has the most complex and
varied build of any of the structures in
this set especially appreciate the
attention to detail on the ground here
they really try to build up the terraces
although I feel like perhaps some green
is missing from this to show the the
levels of planted areas the main tower
structure has building right side up and
upside down they alternate back and
forth with the use of some bars inside
of the structure to help hold it all
together have a feeling this building
took the most time to design because
there are many different ways that you
could do many of the different
components of it and I'm sure there was
a lot of second-guessing involved of
where to put the magenta do you use
magenta or do you use red do you use
that minifig headpiece up here or do you
stack up studs just there are a lot of a
lot of components here that really I'm
sure had to be experimented with back
and forth many ways also they're missing
the struts kind of cross struts that
ought to go in here was there a way to
make that happen I am certain that the
designer spent a lot of time trying
different things here and in the end
ended up with something that is
immediately recognizable even if I think
looking up close at it you could start
to question some of those individual
decisions in mostly medium blue and
using exclude
civilly studs on the side construction
this is the Shanghai World Financial
Center building and this is a difficult
shape to approximate in this scale
especially in Lego they have tried to do
this shape previously for the One World
Trade Center so we had just a little bit
of experience of trying different
techniques and I think this is a fair
representation a fair approximation a
fair way to do it there aren't too many
ways to do it that'll that'll give you
such a consistent finish now this does
make ample use of 2 by 3 tiles which are
a relatively new thing to the Lego world
and also lots and lots of 1 by 3
modified tiles with just two studs on
top so just here you can see how you
have the four stud wide base behind the
widest area then you go to three studs
wide then to do and then to one and all
these things are completely tiled off on
the front so you see absolutely no studs
I think that it's a a good finished
product now the wedge plates that are
used behind the cutout there are angled
in a bit more than they ought to be but
I think this was about as close as they
could reasonably get it in this scale as
you turn the thing around to the side
you can see more of how it tapers
towards at the top along one dimension
but you may also notice just a little
bit of warping forward and that's just
something that always happens with Lego
plates they always tend to pull
themselves towards the studded surface
especially when you have a limited
number of them that can stack and and
hold themselves in place the tapering
continues around the back but does not
look nearly as good here where you have
so many anti studs the undersides of all
of these plates and especially jumper
pieces they did bring in a couple of the
inverted tiles up here but to me those
just don't help very much with
consistency because that breaks things
up and almost makes me wish that it was
all just anti studs that I was saying
just for a consistency
this view last up is the very twisty
Shanghai Tower a shape that you wouldn't
really expect to see made out of LEGO
pieces but that ultimately was
approximated with fairly simple kind of
brute-force techniques when it comes
down to it you're looking at essentially
a huge stack of these pieces they're
just horizontal so some of the faces are
flat and then one of the faces is
rounded like so and they just use some
of these flexible parts inside and then
just to ultimately twist the thing
around it goes through a couple of
90-degree twists and that's pretty much
it there is a section here that doesn't
have any twist to it I mean there's a
very slight amount that you can kind of
force into it but it tries to stay
completely flat so that's just a little
bit off but if you're not looking
forward if you're not looking at just
the right angle you probably won't
notice that and plus you know a lot of
these individual segments will have
slightly different offset so you can
kind of drive yourself crazy trying to
make this look as Perk as perfect as
possible but from any kind of normal
distance to normal observers I'd say it
looks pretty dang good I also think they
did a pretty good job of finishing off
the top was a little bit of flair a
little bit of unique shaping up there
and that includes the use of a couple of
old Bionicle bull rock eyes these pieces
have been known as in just a regular
dark grey I want to get a lot of those
have a feeling that you will be seeing
many many many of those in custom builds
in the future not just in architecture
related things but all kinds of stuff
it's just a very useful piece and it's
nice to get it in such a generic color
and that does it for this one this is my
personal new favorite skyline series set
from Lego architecture although it's not
particularly fair given how large this
is you know it's not entirely fair to
compare it directly against the others
but
I like the varying techniques and I
think that it just looks really nice on
display it's a little bit strange that
they have this this you know set up with
basically going from shortest to tallest
or vice versa but I think that the
positions are are well chosen and the
representation that's here is pretty
good I'm sure that many people could
have suggested other buildings to be
placed in here but I understand why they
chose each of these for an architectural
study and also giving homage to the
different ages of different portions of
the waterfront and the main downtown
area but ultimately this was a fun Lego
set to put together the priced part
ratio is surprisingly fine
it's just a little little expensive
feeling for the volume of stuff that you
get when it's completed because so much
of it uses small detail small pieces and
ends up with fairly dense builds
especially for the two on the right
that's it for my look at this one hope
you enjoyed the little tour I'll talk to
you in soon thanks for watching
you
