This 4,976-Piece Steampunk Institute Hides a Fish Man in a Glass Tube

Gears turning, steam hissing, a rare creature floating in a rotating glass chamber. The Steampunk Institute of Innovation is a 4,976-piece dream palace where Victorian brass meets wild imagination, and it landed on LEGO® Ideas courtesy of builders Fabrick_89 and MagicBrick. This multi-level building houses eleven inventors, each obsessed with a different corner of steam-powered science. Have you ever wanted a whole institute of mad geniuses under one roof?

Step through the main entrance and an elegant foyer greets you, complete with a grand staircase climbing all the way to the central tower. The ground floor splits between an alchemist's laboratory and a mechanic's workshop, the latter connected to a garage stuffed with a helicopter and a blazing motorcycle. That alchemist keeps a cylindrical glass tank filled with liquid, preserving an extremely rare Amphibian Man. A gear mechanism spins the tube from the side base, so you can study the creature from every angle (creepy? Absolutely. Wonderful? Also absolutely).

Upstairs, the clever bits keep coming. The electrical engineer's lab hums around a giant accumulator, while the automaton inventor commands a rotating red mechanical arm that helps assemble robots. Up in the tower, the watchmaker's great clock opens to reveal a secret window, and a hand-cranked rack-and-pinion system makes a cuckoo pop out its little door. On the roof, a camshaft and crank mechanism pumps two chimneys so the boiler puffs steam like a beating brass heart.

The whole thing is modular, so Fabrick_89 and MagicBrick built the floors to separate for play and display alike. Eleven minifigures come along for the ride, including an alchemist, an astronomer with a telescope terrace, a pilot, a child, the Fish Man, and a friendly little robot. There is even a botanical garden watered by a remote-controlled gardener bot.

The Steampunk Institute of Innovation has gathered 500 supporters on its climb toward the 10,000 needed for review. Fancy adding your name to this brass-and-gears fever dream? The support button is ticking like a well-wound clock.