LEGO Icons 10307 Eiffel Tower shares five fun facts with the real-life structure

The design of LEGO Icons 10307 Eiffel Tower takes plenty of inspiration from the real-life building, meaning the two versions share five fun facts with one another.

We already dug into some fun facts about the real-life Eiffel Tower, but there is plenty more to learn about the structure, once the first and greatest of its kind in the world. The Eiffel Tower marked a new age in architecture, so it’s little wonder that the LEGO Group has taken inspiration from the French landmark multiple times over the years.

Both the brick-built set and the iron tower have plenty of unique characteristics – but they also share a number of fun facts. Here’s a look at five of them.

5 – The base improves stability

Whether it’s made of LEGO elements or iron and glass, the base of the Eiffel Tower is vital.

“[The base] serves a dual purpose,” explains LEGO Designer Rok Zgalin Kobe. “It makes the model strong. The base, together with the four legs of the first platform, creates a stable frame.”

Similarly, the real Eiffel Tower relies on its sturdy four legs and heavy base for its strength, allowing it to remain standing tall since it was first erected in 1887.

4 – Teamwork makes the dream work

While Kobe has been the LEGO Designer speaking most vocally and publicly about the set, it was actually a group of other people who first came up with the idea.

“The original plan for the LEGO tower wasn’t mine, but was designed by three of my great colleagues,” said Kobe. “That’s Nick Vás, Joel Baker, and Alice Geiger, which proved that a model of such scale would be feasible in LEGO.”

Similarly, although his name is attached to the tower, Gustave Eiffel was not the sole designer of the real-life building, as explained by historian Bertrand Lemoine in the LEGO Designer video for the set. Two engineers, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, originally had the idea for the tallest tower in the world, completely made out of iron, in 1884.

3 – It’s all in the legs

Kobe goes into great detail about the building process of 10307 Eiffel Tower, but starts off by noting that ‘just like the original tower’, the legs are the most important detail to get right. He explained how the builders of the Eiffel Tower used hydraulic lifts to allow for small adjustments to the tower while it was being built – and that he incorporated the same practice into how you can build 10307.

As you’re building the three parts of the tower and putting them together, you will be able to manipulate and push the LEGO elements into place, making it easier to slot them all together to create a LEGO set of such a staggering height.

2 – First of its kind

Both structures broke the mould, in their own ways. 10307 Eiffel Tower is the tallest LEGO set ever, standing at 1.49 metres tall. In the same way, the Eiffel Tower was 968 feet, making it the tallest structure in the world when it opened in 1889, nearly double the height of the world’s previous tallest structure the 555-foot Washington Monument. It would hold this title until the completion of the 1,046-foot Chrysler Building in New York in 1930, 41 years later. We’re wondering which LEGO set will come along in 41 years to crowd out 10307…

1 – Beauty over brawn

Finally, while a lot of thought went into the structural integrity of both the LEGO and iron versions of the structure, there was also a consideration for how they look. In both of the builds, the arches on the legs serve no structural purpose but are there purely for design purposes.

LEGO Icons 10307 Eiffel Tower is available to all shoppers from LEGO.com and in physical stores from November 25, for a cost of £554.99 / $629.99 / €629.99.

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