Luigi Bombardiere’s Microscale Masterpieces

Article and Photography by Luigi Bombardiere

Luigi Bombardiere has been building for about six years, when he joined an Italian community of LEGO fans on Facebook, Brickpatici. Initially fascinated by the LEGO Architecture theme, he started to try his hand at what bit of bulk elements he had at home (mostly coming from some of his children’s sets). It was there he remembers the first achievements, the challenges, and the nights spent building for pure pleasure… as he says, “Up trying to achieve what I wanted LEGO to be for me.”

From the Architecture theme, Luigi went to Creator Expert sets, then to LEGO IDEAS, up to the latest themes, such as Art. He loves handling bricks. He also likes to collect some sets (the Pickup Truck, T1 Volkswagen, Ship in the Bottle, and Dinosaurs, for example). To replenish his bulk elements, he used to buy sets, but switched to buying parts directly from Bricklink.

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An assortment of Luigi’s microscale models.

Inspiration comes from everything around Luigi, including buildings, architectural works, and LEGO sets in minifigure scale. There is also his passion for ancient history (especially the Greek and the Roman Empire). These can inspire him, but the strongest inspiration comes from the places and environments that have something for him to build and reproduce in a small way. From there, they become part of his daily life and home. Luigi’s challenge is an internal one to make something he likes and share it with the community. Depending on his initial ideas, Luigi may plan his creation or build organically. Sometimes he starts without a precise idea but with the desire to build, then the idea arrives—or that special piece a MOC picks for him comes to his hands. Ideas often come to him in the most surprising moments though (when he is shaving or driving his car), so to keep from forgetting, Luigi has learned to write his ideas down.

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Ben Vijle with one of his microscale models.

Ben Vijle, better known as BelgianBricks in the Instagram community, is a 33-year-old builder from—you guessed it—Belgium. After a visit to the Leicester Square LEGO Store in London in late 2017, he slowly got captivated again by his favorite childhood toy. He started collecting and building the LEGO Architecture sets, but quickly noticed that no Belgian landmarks were represented in the series. So by the end of 2019, he decided to try and design some himself, starting with the skyline of his hometown Ghent, consisting of three medieval towers.

The complete Ghent layout.

Ben Vijle: Belgian Brick Builder!

Some of the details of Ghent.

This proved to be easier said than done, as Ben hadn’t made any LEGO creations of his own since when he was a child, and had little knowledge of the plethora of parts that have become available since then. Furthermore, building at such a small scale (1:500 or even smaller in some of his models) often requires specific building techniques and a bit of LEGO math, due to the limited space available. Ben took his time, discovering and gathering new LEGO elements that could come in handy, learning techniques from other builders in the community, and toying around with Micropolis modules. He prefers to design ‘by hand’ instead of digitally, which posed a challenge at first, because of his limited supply of LEGO elements. It took him about a year to gather the necessary bricks and figure out the best techniques to make the roof and tower of the first church building. In the meantime, he took on a couple of side projects, building models of two other towns.