Metal Earth: Sydney Opera House

Fourteen years late, fifteen times over budget, and worth every cent of it.

Jorn Utzon won the competition in 1957 with a drawing nobody knew how to build, and it took most of a decade to work out that the shells could all be cut from the surface of a single sphere. He left the country before it opened and never came back to see it. It is now the thing Australia puts on the front of everything, which is a reasonable outcome for a building that was once a national embarrassment.

Architecture kits are a different sort of build from the vehicles: fewer moving parts, more repeated curved sections that all have to line up. The shells are the whole job here, and getting them to sit right is genuinely satisfying. Laser-cut stainless steel, no glue or paint, tweezers recommended. Finishes in bare steel on a stand.

Perfect for: A gift going overseas, where it will explain itself without a card.

Laser-cut steel | No glue required | Age 14+