The new Sydney Opera House model, for LEGO's Creator line. Image: LEGO The building’s iconic sails were the toughest detail to capture. Image: LEGO Lead designer Jamie Berard said it was the most challenging model of his 6-year LEGO career. Image: LEGO The staircase is especially gorgeous. Image: LEGO Difficulty? Expert. Image: LEGO

The Sydney Opera House, Jørn Utzon's iconic arts center, is a marvel of modern architecture. Now it's a marvel of modern Lego, too. With a new set, available this September for $320, Australia's best-known building joins the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal as part of Lego's high-end Creator line. It's not the first time Lego's tackled the landmark–a different model was made available last year through the Architecture series, but it only used a paltry 270 pieces. It kind of looked like the real thing, if you squinted.

With 2,989 bricks, the new model is astoundingly detailed, capturing subtle touches like the gray lines running through the venue's main staircase. And where the older set was pegged for ages 12 and up–literally child's play–this one comes with an "expert" designation, recommended only for builders at least 16 years of age. If you're legally allowed to operate a motor vehicle, but only with a parent riding shotgun, this thing might make your head explode.

>Building a masterpiece replica from scratch is a different level of crazy.

Of course, putting the model together with the instructions is one thing. Building a masterpiece replica from scratch is an entirely different level of crazy. That task falls to Lego's designers, an indefatigable group of tinkerers, many of whom trained as architects themselves. Even with a handful of Masters degrees and access to every Lego brick in existence, though, the Opera House presented a unique challenge. Jamie Berard, Design Manager Specialist for the Creator line, says it was the hardest model he's worked on in his 6-year career designing products for the company. "Lego bricks are quite good at making buildings with straight walls and sloping roofs," he explains. "Creating a piece of architecture with so many compound curves and angled walls really pushed the boundaries of what our bricks are capable of."

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Unsurprisingly, the building's signature sails were the toughest nut to crack. First the team tried standard plates and bricks, but the result was too blocky. Then they tried sloping bricks, but the gaps in between the individual pieces took away from the fluid form. Ultimately, the designers settled on a pair of sloping bow pieces to capture the expressiveness of the original architecture. Incredibly, in total, it took nearly half as long to figure out how to render the feature in tiny plastic blocks as it did to complete the real thing. "Considering it took engineers eight years to figure out how to make the real Opera House sails, I feel quite proud that it only took us three," Berard says.

But simply building a model that looks like the real thing isn't enough. The designers also have to make sure it's fun to put together.

>'I feel quite proud that it only took us three years.'

"Our philosophy has always been to deliver a world-class building experience first and foremost," Berard explains. To offer some measure of sanity to builders, the new Opera House employs a modular design, where individual pieces can be assembled independently and snapped together, Voltron-style, into the final structure. After all, Lego isn't just about the product, but the process, too.

"We are not a modeling company looking to create static exact replicas of anything," Berard says. "Hopefully people love a model like the Sydney Opera House not only because they think it looks impressive, but also because they want to know how it's built. That's when we know we got it just right."