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Some 12 hours into constructing Notre-Dame from more than 4,300 Lego pieces, I finally arrived at the pinnacle: the soaring spire, or flèche, that became a defining feature of the cathedral in the 1860s, 700 years after the first stones were laid.
I remember vividly how it first blazed, split, then crashed through the roof during the awful fire in 2019. Now, I was assembling its miniature replica with several gray discs, a stack of grooved wheels, a single cone, and a slim baton shooting upward. Standing in for the copper-covered apostles that encircled the spire were 12 tiny green Lego figures that I lowered into place.
And then it was done: a magnificent model Notre-Dame that currently resides in my living room near a wobbly Eiffel Tower, a Louvre façade (complete with pyramid), and a small Arc de Triomphe—all in amazingly complex configurations of bricks and assorted parts.
Elsewhere in my apartment is a delicate bonsai emerging from plastic pebbles and, as of a few days ago, Pharrell Williams’s Over the Moon set, which comprises a rocket blasting from a rainbow fuel trail and an abacus-style array of 49 heads of various shades and faces called Phriends. Just shy of 1,000 pieces, it was less arduous to erect than Notre-Dame, which abused my fingertips and necessitated a steady stream of listening accompaniments—recaps of the vice presidential debate, an interview with Sally Rooney, the audiobook of Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI—that added to my appreciation for this utterly analogue activity.
I purchased my Notre-Dame when it came out in June, yet it sat unopened for months. It felt like the leviathan of Lego. I was overwhelmed by its size and elaborate degree of detail: all those arcades and little houselike structures that mimicked the outward tabernacles conceived by Viollet-le-Duc and a tiled floor and columns that you could only see if you squinted through the main portals. This was not some toy. It was an undertaking that represented centuries of labor, a sacred archetype of Gothic grandeur. (In the 287-page manual, senior designer Rok Zgalin Kobe notes that the stages of assembly correspond to the actual chronology of the cathedral’s construction, from 1163.)
In early September, the motivation I needed appeared before my eyes. Walking past Île de la Cité, I noticed how the curtains of scaffolding around Notre-Dame had receded, a welcome sign that its reconstruction was nearing completion. Owing to the work of countless engineers and artisans from around the world, the cathedral is scheduled to open again in December—essentially fulfilling Emmanuel Macron’s promise to restore Notre-Dame to its former glory within five years. The next day, box open, I stared at 34 packages of Lego pieces. Deep breath.
Although I qualify as an AFOL (adult fan of Lego), I am neither an expert builder nor obsessive about my collection. I only gravitate toward sets that I would like to live with or that feel more personal. Certainly when I was young, I preferred Lego over dolls; I have memories of assembling a hospital and a gas station. My rediscovery began with the Architecture series when it debuted around 15 years ago, and I bought Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater for my father; we built it together over a weekend, telling ourselves that we would visit one day. Next, I gravitated toward the Paris monuments, as they combined my unshakable love of the city where I have lived for 13 years with the pleasures of a purely manual project. Channeling one’s focus on the Lego version of a flying buttress, repeated dozens of times across the exterior, means not scrolling social media, and to click the bell towers into place is to hear the sound of satisfaction. Moving the figurines of Williams and his wife, Helen Lasichanh, for a brief moment to the front of Notre-Dame and then to the Louvre (definitely not to scale) felt like my inner kid taking over.
Friday marked the release of Piece by Piece, a documentary about Williams made entirely in Lego-style animation. I have yet to see the film, but I did attend Williams’s Over the Moon launch, a space-themed soiree in Paris that featured a life-size abacus with spaces for people to mug for a fun photo op. In a brief Q&A with Alero Akuya, Lego’s VP of global brand development, Williams told the crowd, “Lego has just given me this opportunity to foster more imagination with every person that has the opportunity to put their hands on the set.”
His longtime friend and occasional collaborator Sarah Andelman (of Colette and Just an Idea) was involved both in that event and another program, L’Atelier des Super-Pouvoirs (Superpower Studios), open to visitors to the Gaîté Lyrique for five days in September. There, people were handed a bucket of assorted bricks and encouraged to create a self-portrait, while elsewhere in the space, concepts related to a forest of wishes and otherworldly creatures by three Lego ambassadors—Chen Fenwan, Ekow Nimako, and Aurélia Durand—were similarly interactive, suited to kids and grown-ups alike.
Later, by phone, Akuya said something that stuck with me. “Lego is a creative medium that can be used to tell stories and create worlds…in our case, the Legoverse. But it can be your story, my story, Pharrell’s story—everyone is welcome to build their own story.”
Back in 2022, before Williams arrived as the men’s creative director, Louis Vuitton made Lego part of its story, first collaborating with the company over several activations. During the holidays, trunks, Damier-pattern backgrounds, and even the Pont Neuf were rendered in bricks in its store windows. It was an unexpectedly whimsical direction for the luxury house, the wintery scenes capturing a certain seasonal spirit.
Perhaps my next project will be something more free-form, although a kind of magic is transferred between those who mastermind the sets—drawing from the Gothic past or the space-age future—and all of us who build them. Last month, Lego and Nike revealed that they are teaming up to create sets that will drop in 2025. Fans are already envisioning the potential of dazzlingly intricate sneaker models—but whatever they conceive, they’ve got a doubly affirming message: Just do it, brick by brick.