Double-decker Ponte de Dom Luís I bridge is a massive microscale achievement

With two decks built above and below its iron arch, Portugal’s Dom Luís I Bridge is a beautiful testament to late 19th-century engineering. Inspired by this double-deck marvel, civil engineering student and LEGO architecture fan Sébastien Houyoux took to Studio to painstakingly recreate the bridge and the the buildings of Porto and Gaia built in its shadow.

The model stretches 1.3 meters and is made up of 13,000 elements. The builder designed a 1/650 scale version of the bridge two years ago, but for this updated take, Sébastien doubles the detail with a scale of 1/325.

Designing the structures around the bride was especially tricky as none of the streets and buildings are aligned with the LEGO grid, requiring some clever use of wedge plates.

While this version is made digitally in Studio, the builder moves to physical bricks when possible (like Sébastien ‘s last bridge project, the Viaduc de Garabit).

Sébastien draws on ingots and roller skates, and hinge top, among other pieces to achieve textures at microscale, but the star element here is the humble minifig hand, used hundreds of times on the iron girders of the bridge arch and supports.

Sébastien shares this bridge as part of the 2025 Marchitecture content, which is open to entries until the end of the month. Learn more here.

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