A lighthouse on the horizon can be a welcome sight for a weary sailor or a portent of rocks ahead. The beacons of light have inspired many LEGO builders to create their own versions, fore beautiful to foreboding.

Sandro posing with his original lighthouse concept (right), and the final set design.

Quite a few people have submitted lighthouse models to LEGO IDEAS in the past, but it is this model by Sandro Quattrini (Instagram) that outshined them all by making it past the evaluation stages and into production. You may already be familiar with Sandro from all of his recent character builds that continue to garner the attention of LEGO bloggers everywhere. When it comes to his finalized lighthouse design, you can tell that Sandro and the LEGO design team took just as much care in injecting as much character as they could into that endeavor as well. It is mentioned in the promotional materials that he wanted to capture the magical nature of lighthouses that he visited with his family, and he has certainly just done that.

So today, let’s shine a light on other notable MOCs that people have built in that same genre. I decided once again to be the person to take this task on, because like Sandro (and I suspect like most people) I also have a fascination with lighthouses.

In a prior article, I wrote that when I joined the LEGO community migration over to Flickr, I leaned hard into the photography side of the site for quite a few years (this was well before my LEGO collection was large enough to build anything decent coming out of my Dark Age). Once I finally saved up enough money for a decent DSLR camera, I took it with me on a September vacation trip up the coast of Lake Michigan in the quest of taking photos of some really cool lighthouses. What better way to commemorate that trip, and the Motorized Lighthouse set finally being available than to take another trip in search of cool lighthouses—this time across the LEGO building community.

And what better place to start than at the beginning…

Lighthouse of Alexandria - by Centuri Chan

The romantic notion of a lone lighthouse on a rocky shore, guiding our sea-faring loved ones home, has likely been around as long as there have been lighthouses. Some people have even dared to have first dates under their watchful chaperoning eye. It worked well for Are, so those out to make some lasting love connections should take note (… and although not directly next to a lighthouse, I did propose to my wife in view of one on the rocky shores of Rhode Island—long story short, she said yes and we will be marking 21 years of marriage in October).

So what does all this have to do with the Lighthouse of Alexandria, credited as being the first lighthouse in the world? While it’s only speculation (since it fell into ruin after a series of earthquakes between 956 and 1323 AD), I am betting somewhere on its façade was carved “Mark Antony + Cleopatra”, with a heart surrounding it.

Ryan McNaught (you know the one) shared this photo back in 2016 of the Lighthouse of Alexandria model designed and built by Centuri Chan. It was designed and built to be accurate to recorded descriptions, with a tapered squared-off based tower and capped with an octagonal top tower. He said they added a “tonne of fun details” on the cutaway side, which he promised us he’d upload photos of later. Well, it has been almost six years later now, and we’re still waiting on those photos… but once he does post them, I’m sure we will be seeing that “Mark Antony + Cleopatra” graffiti recreated as faithfully as the rest of this build.

New Wave - by Ralph Langer

Although he didn’t specify, one would assume that Ralph Langer took at least some inspiration from La Jument Lighthouse, off the coast of France for his “New Wave” build. As this famous photo can attest, it has stood up to some of the mightiest of waves. Will Ralph’s lighthouse and village be as lucky? Their fates all hinge upon the hinge parts that Ralph used to create the shaping of that wave.

Lighthouse - by Tim Schwalfenberg

Are has a keen eye for finding lighthouses too, and when I mentioned this one by Tim Schwalfenberg his immediate reply was “That one has been in the Masterpiece Gallery if I'm not mistaken!” Sure enough, Are confirmed that it was indeed on display in LEGO House from 2018 to 2019. The monochromatic style of Tim’s build is very reminiscent of Mike Doyle’s series of ruined houses, so it’s no wonder that it caught Are’s attention.

Tim perfectly paired his build with this excerpt he shared that provided him inspiration:

“He seemed to live only for his lantern. There he lived, silently, watchfully, his eyes ever fixed on the vessels going or returning; isolated from his fellow-beings; above life, and yet below it; above its affections, its hopes, its fears, its sympathies, and yet only half alive; dead to the world, and yet a world to himself; a fiery human soul in the midst of a waste of waters.” -- Elizabeth Harcourt Mitchell, The Lighthouse: A Novel, 1860

Costal Guardian - by Markus Rollbühler

“A beacon in white, overlooking the waters, standing tall and guarding sailors in the night: A small, dependable lighthouse, and a home for an old sea dog.”

BrickNerd contributor and resident poet laureate Markus Rollbühler said that at the time of posting, this lighthouse had been sitting around on his “WIP windowsill” for a few months before he finally had the urge to tackle the daunting rock it was going to sit on… and that lighthouse is now sitting on a shelf in a display case at the LEGO House! It does make you wonder, though, how many other residents of Billund have “WIP windowsills”. With the appetite for all things LEGO these days, this seems like a ripe business opportunity for some enterprising person to identify all the “WIP windowsills” around Billund and provide walking tours past them all.

Somewhere in New England - by Anthony Wilson

Although Anthony Wilson didn’t confess to having his own “WIP windowsill”, he did admit that “This thing has been lying around in a mostly completed state for around a month and a half” before finally posting pictures. Not sure what else he was looking to add over that time as this scene seems to tick off all of the quintessential elements for a coastal New England lighthouse; a rocky shore, the autumn colors in the trees, the rowboat at the docks… oops. I see what’s missing. There’s no lobstah for the lobstah bake… or I guess quahogs if this is set in Rhode Island.

To the Lighthouse - by Birgitte Jonsgard

Birgitte Jonsgard described her lighthouse above as “a summary of the common shapes and features of lighthouses along the Norwegian coast, and the rock formations they're often built upon.” This lighthouse was added to her much larger coastal landscape, called "North Utsire, South Utsire" that she has had on display at different conventions in Europe (photo below). I could see taking this photo down to the travel agent’s office (do those still exist?), slapping it down on their desk, and saying “I want to go to there.”

Whale Rock Lighthouse - by Casper van Nimwegen

This fantastic octagonal one by Dutch builder Casper van Nimwegen was finished just in time for him to display at Legoworld Utrecht (NL) in October 2013. This is how he described the building process:

“Sometimes the journey is much more interesting than its destination. And to me, this MOC is just that. This MOC was a personal victory for me. It's the biggest and most complex thing I’ve done. It took about six months planning, saving parts, and building. And each step in the building process was a torture to get it right. There were at least three times I had to count to a hundred to prevent myself from slamming the whole freaking thing in a crate and just forget all about it. It made me lose sleep thinking about how to solve building issues. It stopped me from going out when the sun was up. Corners didn't fit and jumped loose from the base. Roofs didn't line up right. The whole thing even crashed down from the table days before its deadline when lifted to put something under it.”

I really appreciate Casper’s candor here. It goes to show you that many times there is more to see in a build than meets the eye. Many times we see the beautiful end result once it is finally shared in public, and never realize all of the labor and trial-and-error it took for that person’s vision to become a reality.

Galaxy Cliff Lighthouse - by Pete Strege

And speaking of grand visions… The big question on everyone’s minds when witnessing Pete Strege’s Galaxy Cliff Lighthouse for the first time is “What's the significance of adding the wheel to the lighthouse?” This question was asked by Nannan Zhang on one of Pete’s WIP photos for his lighthouse. His reply:

“The wheel is a spiral of galaxies in the sky. Each gondola was supposed to be a vignette of an autobiographical event. However, the weight of 8-16 sailboats was too much to balance; I reduced the theme to light and dark boats to represent the positive and negative.”

You can find more WIP photos of this tremendous build in the Flickr album he created for the project, as well as a video of the wheel in action and more photos of the lighthouse.

That wraps up our cruise of lighthouse MOCs from around the LEGO community. We hope you’ve enjoyed this enlightening round-up!

And if you want to build your own, the LEGO Ideas 21335 Motorized Lighthouse is available for $299.99. It has 2,065 pieces including a motor and lights, new foliage colors, and a dark blue baseplate.

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published September 1, 2022.

Do you know of any other lighthouse LEGO MOCs that we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

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