A Dinosaur in Paris: Rebuilding the City of Love

There are certain circumstances that lead you to rediscover your own country, especially its capital city. That was the case for me at the beginning of 2025, when I traveled with my wife to Paris to record LEGO Masters France Season 5. Between filming days, I had the chance to spend a lot of time wandering the streets of Paris, reconnecting with its monuments and museums.

So when BrickNerd sent me this LEGO Architecture set ahead, all I knew was that it was “related to Paris” and my curiosity was immediately piqued.

Opening the box revealed 21064 Paris – City of Love, a release that reinvents the Architecture line by adding some dimension and leaning more heavily into its role as a wall decoration rather than a pure cityscape model.

Discovering and Building the Set

As usual, I won’t dive into a traditional set review here as many RLFMs already do that exceptionally well. I recommend checking out the excellent coverage from our French friends at Hothbricks or those at Brickset for a full breakdown of the build experience. For those who enjoy digging into a set’s parts inventory and thinking ahead to future MOCs, New Elementary offers a detailed analysis of the elements in the set.

Building the set as intended is quite different from other Architecture sets. The focus is less on exact scale and more on composition and atmosphere. The landmarks are simplified, but they remain immediately recognizable, arranged in layers against a dark background that creates a sense of depth through forced perspective.

The frame is an important part of the design. The set works as a decorative object, either on a shelf or on a wall, and feels designed more for display. That shift in architectural perspectives won’t be for everyone, but it does open up some interesting possibilities.

After building the set as intended, I started thinking about other possibilities. This is BrickNerd, and that means we’re always looking for challenges that are as nerdy as they are fun. In the past, we’ve even taken the Eiffel Tower and turned it into a LEGO UCS Christmas tree, so ignoring the original instructions is practically a tradition here. So the real question became: what kind of mischief could we get up to with this set?

The Idea

At first, inspiration didn’t strike. Nothing about the contents immediately suggested an obvious alternate build. It took a few days and some outside perspective before my sons pointed me in the right direction. Both of them are big fans of the Dinosaurs Fossils sub-theme, which sparked the question: what if we used this entire set to create a new fossil?

We settled on a Hadrosaurus. It may not be the most famous dinosaur, but we were drawn to the distinctive shape of its skull and skeleton. An exact replica would be impossible with this inventory alone, but it felt like a solid foundation for the challenge.

The Build

I started the project with my youngest son (11), beginning with the jaws and teeth. From there, we worked on shaping the skull. That’s where things became trickier. The geometry required a bit more trial and error, so I continued refining the build on my own.

Building the skull required a lot of improvisation. Without specific elements, we focused mainly on shape and angles. I quite love all the fence pieces, and we used the limited amount of dark tan elements to add a bit of texture and depth.

The process was not linear. Some sections worked quickly, while others were rebuilt several times after stepping back and checking the proportions. This back-and-forth was a big part of the build. After longer than I would have liked, the finished skull was ready!

The Details

With the skull complete, we turned our attention to the stand and a few details inspired by classic fossil displays. The stand played a key role in the final result. Instead of treating the skull as a standalone object, we designed the base to resemble the museum-style display used by the other fossil sets.

First up: a dinosaur footprint in the base.

Secondly, a few details of the fences that allow us to immerse ourselves in the Jurassic World saga.

Here are a few close-up shots of the construction details. The structure is surprisingly solid, and much of the final shaping is made possible by the generous use of joints, which allow the skull to be built using numerous angles.

Integrating the Fossil Theme

To put things in context, we photographed our Hadrosaurus skull next to 76964 Dinosaur Fossils: T. rex Skull. It’s still a bit wild to think that the creation on the right started life as an Architecture set based on the city of Paris. At this point, the title “A Dinosaur in Paris” probably makes a little more sense.

My time in Paris reminded me that you can get pretty far with a dinosaur—even one that’s skeletal, awkward, and not exactly pretty. Personally, I’m not much of a dinosaur fan. Left to my own devices, I probably would have built a dramatic, tentacled octopus instead. But you can’t choose your weapons or the rules.

Parts Remaining

In total, we used 557 pieces for this build. Rather than counting as we went, we worked backward by tallying what was left: 401 unused pieces remained in the box. That’s still a substantial number, and it’s tempting to think there might be another MOC hiding in those leftovers.

Interestingly, the final part count lines up closely with LEGO’s official Fossil theme sets—the T. rex skull comes in at 577 pieces, while the Triceratops uses 468.

Despite starting from a decorative Architecture set, the resulting fossil works as a fairly stable display. Not bad for a set that started out celebrating the City of Love.

LEGO Architecture 21064 Paris - City of Love is available for around US $800 | EU €80 | CA $100 | UK 170 | AU $130.

DISCLAIMER: This set was provided to BrickNerd by LEGO. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

And what do you see in your favorite city? Or rather, what do you think you can build with it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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