Set Review ➟ 21029 Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace is the 2nd set related to London in the Architecture range, but actually it is the 4th one, including Big Ben and Tower Bridge Creator Expert sets. It seems that UK is an important market for LEGO (despite the recent news about the Brexit), and there are some related models from London to attract the UK customers (recently there is also a promotional set of a London Bus).
The box of Buckingham Palace set is thicker compared to other Architecture sets. I think it is because the part count, but not a real need because all bags and instruction booklet fit in thinner one.
As always the box is very elegant, with a black background that allows to highlight the model. In the front part there is a picture of the LEGO model. It’s curious to see that LEGO is still producing two different boxes, one for the European market without the part count, and another for the US market with it.
On the rear side there are two pictures comparing the real model with the brick-based one. You can see the similarities between both buildings, although the angle is not the same.
The Model
The building itself is not especially interesting in terms of Architecture. That’s why I think that the designers added the monument in front of the palace, as well as a London Bus and a Taxi. Then the model is interesting enough to be a set, and makes it more recognizable.
There are no separated building steps, as usual in the Architecture models. So the first thing to do is separate the parts to be able to easily find them. Most of the parts are 1x1 or 1x2 so the need of this first step is especially recommended.
The basement is the first part to build. The size is 24x26 studs. This basement is built basically with plates and tiles. The plates are used to put the building and accessories over it. There are three colours of tiles: dark tan for the pedestrian area, dark stone gray for the pavement and olive green for the garden area.
The palace is the next part to build. First of all I built the rear side of the building. It is simple, without windows or doors. This part is used to give robustness to the model, because the front part is more detailed, but more fragile. There are some bricks with stud on one side to allow change the building direction, from horizontal to vertical.
The front façade is the most detailed part of the building. There is the main entrance, the columns, all the windows and the roofs. The level of detail is high enough to look like the real building, despite the scale.The two lateral modules are added before the main façade, which is a unique module built vertically.
Finally roofs are added to the building.
The fences, monument and vehicles are quite fast to be built. I have to recognize that the Victoria Memorial, the monument in front of the palace, is very well reproduced, especially in its proportions and using only 9 parts. The same with the London Bus. 7 parts for an icon of the city, or 4 for the taxi. Impressive.
Finally to complete the model, like in the real life, the flag is placed in the top of the building. Then we know that the Queen is in the palace...
Conclusion
Like any architecture sets, we can not expect very complex building techniques or high level of detail. I have to say that perhaps it is not one model I was expecting, because there are a lot of buildings in the world more interesting than Buckingham Palace, but I suppose that this could be more a Marketing decision than a real interest for the building.
Anyway the model is nice, taking in count the addition of the external complements, as I explained before. It doesn’t take so long to build it and the complexity is low/medium. If you have ever been there, you can quickly recognize it and see the similarities. For the other people, I think that the London Bus and Taxi help to recognize the building and locate it in the map.
I would like to thank LEGO AFOL Relations and Programs Team for providing the set for review. The opinions expressed in this review are of course entirely my own.
2258
