The phrases ‘adult toys’ and ‘city blocks’ take on a different meaning when applied to architecturally sophisticated LEGO sets like these, enabling you to make your own miniature replicas of the cityscapes including the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Berlin TV Tower, St. Mark’s Basilica and much more. The Architecture Skyline Series explores the most famous architectural achievements of three cities: New York, Venice and Berlin.

These aren’t your ordinary blank slate LEGO bricks, from which all manner of creations can spring, but rather very specific pieces for very specific structures.

With the NYC package, you’ll get the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty and Flatiron Building as well as the brand new One World Trade Center. Berlin includes the Reichstag, Victory Column, Deutsche Bahn Tower, Berlin TV Tower and Brandenburg Gate. The Venice model will give you St. Mark’s Basilica and Campanile, Rialto Bridge, St. Theodore and the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs.

LEGO has been teasing the release of these sets on Facebook for weeks, and has now revealed that they’ll be available on an unnamed date in January 2016. Follow the company’s Facebook page if you want to be among the first to find out so you can snatch up your own box.

These upcoming sets arrive on the heels of a stunning model of the Louvre in Paris, as well as LEGO’s Architecture Studio, which offers 1210 white and transparent bricks to design and build the architecture of your imagination. Check out the LEGO Architecture series for other classic structures, like Rome’s Trevi Fountain and the Lincoln Memorial.

Altering most of today’s cities to eliminate cars altogether would be a daunting, if not impossible, proposition – which is why China is starting from scratch. Great City will be built around a high-rise core housing 80,000 people, entirely walkable, and surrounded by green space.

Planned for a rural area outside Chengdu, the high-density Great City will give residents access to a ‘buffer area’ of gardens and greenery making up 60% of the total area of the city. Walking from the center of the city to the green spaces takes just ten minutes, and other nearby urban centers will be accessible by a mass transit system.

Chicago architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture say the city will use 48% less energy and 58% less water than a more conventional city of the same size; it will also produce 89% less landfill waste and generate 60% less carbon dioxide.

The development addresses the problem of overpopulation, pollution and urban sprawl by compacting a lot of residents into vertical housing, growing food nearby. “The design is attempting to address some of the most pressing urban issues of our time, including the need for sustainable, dense urban living at a cost people can afford,” says Gill.

“Accordingly, we’ve designed this project as a dense vertical city that acknowledges and in fact embraces the surrounding landscape—a city whose residents will live in harmony with nature rather than in opposition to it. Great City will demonstrate that high-density living doesn’t have to be polluted and alienated from nature. Everything within the built environment of Great City is considered to enhance the quality of life of its residents. Quite simply, it offers a great place to live, work and raise a family.”

Richly detailed and highly evocative, the miniature streetscapes created by artist Evol appear in the most unexpected places – using the most unexpected materials. Known for stenciling windows and other architectural details onto urban surfaces like power boxes, Evol also crafts entire city blocks from humble reclaimed cardboard and metal scraps.

Taking inspiration from the very cities in which he sources the discarded materials, Evol applies stencils and drawings of rooflines, smokestacks, chimneys, fire escapes and street lights. Spots of wear and tear on the cardboard appear to be part of the buildings themselves.

The smallest details, like satellite dishes, curtains, labels on dumpsters and utility cables, are rendered so faithfully that you’ll take a second look at each scene to confirm that you’re really looking at a piece of cardboard.

While most of the Berlin-based artist’s work is out in the streets of his home city and beyond, Evol does show his work – including this series – in galleries. ‘Repeat Offender’ appeared at New York City’s Jonathan Levine Gallery in April and May 2012.

“Clean surfaces don’t speak to me,” says Evol in a statement at the gallery, “so recording these marks is a process of remembering the charm of a place that will soon be painted over.”

Remember SimCity 2000? It was so easy to waste hours and hours planning and building cities, then watching disasters befall the unfortunate citizens. But the problem was always that you had to eventually quit and go back to the real world. Thanks to a young architect with access to a 3D printer and a love for SimCity, the world now has a fantastic tabletop version of the game.

(all images via: Thingiverse)

Using Google Sketch-Up to create the buildings, Thingiverse member Skimbal printed them out at 10X scale to allow for a greater level of detail.

Each building is printed on a little square base. All of the bases can fit together in a grid – just like in the game – to make a unique and colorful miniature city.

When the buildings are all printed, you can arrange and rearrange them just like you did during those endless hours playing SimCity. Skimbal was kind enough to post his Google Sketch-up files so that everyone with a 3D printer can make their own tabletop SimCity.

After you print your very own buildings, you can play Supreme Ruler and rain down all kinds of misery on the imaginary residents of your new locality. Because, after all, isn’t that the best part of being in charge of your own city?

It has been said that every city makes its own unique music, though that “music” is more like a discordant jumble of various urban noises. What would it sound like if a city really could make music? Artist Akko Goldenbeld turned the city of Eindhoven into a one-of-a-kind musical instrument that makes the other type of urban music seem like…well, noise.

(all images via: designboom)

The project is called Stadsmuziek (or “City Music”), and it involves a large drum, a scale model of the city and a piano. The model of Eindhoven, Netherlands was made to accurately depict the sizes and locations of the city’s buildings, which all sport their own unique height and shape.

When the drum is slowly turned by hand, the three-dimensional buildings depress keys on the piano. The resulting music is strange and not at all melodic, but it is weirdly appealing, particularly when paired with the visual of the artist painstakingly turning the drum.

Every part of the city represents a different sound, adding a new layer of personality to the buildings and void spaces there. Next time you walk through your city, think about what unique sound would be made by each of the buildings you pass by – maybe the city will take on a new kind of music.