Ep. 113 - A Fallingwater Showdown - LEGO versus The Atom Brick: The Full Review

The Imagination Brickshop’s LEGO Brickcast

It’s Wild Card Wednesday, and this week I’m doing something a little off the beaten path. Not one review… but TWO. And yes—you heard me right—one of them isn’t even LEGO. Purists, hold onto your minifigs, because I’m comparing the classic LEGO Architecture Fallingwater (21005) with The Atom Brick’s enormous 4,383-piece Fallingwater set to see which one actually does Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece justice.

If you don’t know the story, Fallingwater isn’t just some house in the woods—it’s one of the most famous pieces of modern architecture ever built. Today it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and still pulls in around 150,000 visitors every year. Frank Lloyd Wright himself designed over a thousand structures in his lifetime, but Fallingwater might just be the crown jewel.

So how do the brick-built versions stack up? LEGO’s 2009 Architecture set comes in at 811 pieces and has been retired for years—if you want one now, expect to pay a small fortune on the aftermarket. On the other hand, the 2023 Atom Brick’s version—also designed by Adam Reed Tucker, the very guy who created the LEGO Architecture theme and LEGO Fallingwater in the first place—aims for extreme detail and scale, clocking in at nearly 19 inches wide and just under $350.

In this episode, I’ll do a full breakdown of both sets—the build, the details, the display value—and give my ratings on whether they’re worthy additions to your collection. Does bigger automatically mean better? Or does LEGO’s more modest version still capture the soul of Fallingwater in a way that 4,000+ pieces can’t?

Spoiler: The results may surprise you, so tune in to find out.

Music Credit: YouTube Music Library