Arnaud Gaudillat, a history professor in France, remembers bursting into tears as he watched the flames ravaging Notre-Dame Cathedral on television in 2019. “We could do nothing but watch it burn” , did he declare.
Now, five years later, as hundreds of architects, engineers and metallurgists race to complete the reconstruction of the cathedral’s roof and electrical wiring by the end of the year , Mr. Gaudillat will not sit idly by. He will build his own Notre-Dame. A fact of 4,383 Lego pieces.
Lego, the world’s largest toy company, released a model of Notre Dame Cathedral on Saturday, featuring rose windows, bell towers and a central spire surrounded by statues. The set, designed for adults, will be part of the company’s collection of sets based on architectural feats, including that of Frank Lloyd Wright. Waterfall and his Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
“I just want to have this beautiful thing in my house,” Mr. Gaudillat, 25, said of the Notre Dame decor. He started building complex Lego sets a few years ago and was hooked.
The Danish toy company is best known for its colorful playsets for children, including its best-selling animal sets, train sets and Harry Potter-themed sets. But since 2020, when Lego launched a new category of toys marketed to people aged 18 and over, the company has doubled the size of its adult-oriented line. About 20 percent of the sets sold by the company are aimed at adult Lego fans, known as AFOLs.
The Notre Dame set, selling for $229.99, is attracting attention for its design and because it is the first religious structure the company has released in 67 years, according to Lego’s official historian.
Thomas Lajon, a screenwriter and director in Paris, said he wanted to buy the Lego Notre-Dame because of the importance to him of the real cathedral, a jewel of medieval Gothic architecture.
“This is the time to reconnect with the cathedral by going there or rebuilding it with Lego bricks,” said Mr. Lajon, 28, who designed the Lego model of the Orient Express as part of a corporate program that solicits design ideas from fans.
Construction of the (real) Notre-Dame Cathedral began in 1163, during the reign of King Louis VII, and was completed in 1345. During the French Revolution in the 1790s, a mob beheaded statues of the kings at Notre-Dame, and the cathedral fell into ruin.
Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” shed light on the state of the cathedral and provided the impetus for its renovation, which took place from 1844 to 1864. Architect Eugène Viollet-le -Duke designs and adds an arrow.
Genevieve Capa Cruz, Lego Group’s head of adult products, said in an interview that the company’s adult Lego fan base has grown in recent years, particularly among those she describes as adults with high-pressure jobs who view building Lego as a way to relax.
The company is trying to redefine playing with Legos as “a legitimate leisure activity” for adults, she said. “The same way you would invest time and money into making ceramic bowls.”
Themes that resonate with adults include architecture, flowers and movies, such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars,” she said. Adult Lego fans are important to the company not only because adult sets are more expensive – the Star Wars Millennium Falcon the model costs $850 — but because they also tend to buy Lego gifts for kids, she said.
Lego reported a 4 percent increase in sales last year, even as other toy companies like Mattel and Hasbro saw declines. In this context, Lego plans to open at least 100 additional stores over the next 10 months, Chief Executive Officer Niels B. Christiansen said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
Sonia Hudson, an intensive care doctor at a hospital outside London, said she plans to buy two of Notre Dame’s Lego sets. She will build one to display in her living room, and the other she will purchase for her bricks, to add to her collection of around 500,000 pieces, which she uses to create her own creations.
“I don’t think of Lego as a toy,” said Dr. Hudson, 50. “I see it as a construction support. I could build with wood, I could build with clay, but if I was wrong I would have to start all over again.
Rok Zgalin Kobe, the Lego designer who created the Notre Dame set, said he designed the cathedral in such a way that users would have to build it using the same steps the real cathedral was built, rather than bottom to top, tracing almost 900 years of history.
“Once you finish it, you can actually look out the front door,” he said. “You feel the sensation of space, the feeling of majesty that comes with it.”
The set design process involved experimentation, requiring daily trips to a room at the company’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark, which contains versions of every available Lego brick for creating new projects.
Like Dr. Hudson, the doctor who uses Legos to relax, Gordon Finlay, 62, took up Legos again after not playing with them for a long time. He and other Lego fans call this period, between when people stopped playing with Lego as children and when they rediscovered them as adults, “the Dark Ages.”
Mr Finlay, who lives near Glasgow, said he planned to build Notre Dame out of Lego next month, just before 15 million tourists visit Paris for the Olympics.
