Architecture

San Francisco

The little Skyline set that finally figured out how to fake depth, and it works.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 21043 · 2019

Pieces565

Minifigsn/a

Year2019

Set number21043

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The verdict

This is the Skyline model where LEGO stopped lining everything up flat and started playing with your eyes.

The Golden Gate Bridge shrinks as it heads off to the right, and that one trick gives the whole shelf piece a sense of distance the earlier Architecture sets never had. It is fiddly in places and the back is plain, but I came away genuinely charmed. If you have any love for San Francisco, or you just want the most quietly clever Skyline set of its year, this is an easy one to say yes to.

Best for: City lovers who want a smart, display-ready Skyline model rather than a big weekend build

The full review

What it is

San Francisco was the moment the LEGO Architecture Skyline line grew up a little. Instead of a flat row of buildings sized to fit the baseplate, designer Rok Zgalin Kobe leaned into forced perspective, which is a fancy way of saying he made the far tower of the Golden Gate Bridge smaller than the near one so your brain reads it as distance. The first time I got both towers standing and stepped back, I actually grinned, because it works. You get the Painted Ladies at one end, then 555 California Street, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Salesforce Tower, the bridge in Dark Red, and Alcatraz sitting out on the water. Coit Tower and Fort Point are in there too, tucked in without their own name labels. For 565 pieces it packs a surprising amount of the city onto one strip.

The catch

I will be honest about where it tests you. The Golden Gate Bridge is the best and the most maddening part of the build, because the towers and cabling are delicate and things you have already attached like to fall off while you place the next bit. It is worth it, but keep a steady hand and a patient mood. The Salesforce Tower is the opposite problem, a repetitive stack of bricks with studs on two sides, plates in between, then two dozen little curved teeth clipped on to make that tapered glass shape. It is clever engineering and dull to actually do. Add in some print alignment that can wander, a Transamerica Pyramid that is only one tile deep so the back looks bare, and a price that was fifty dollars for a fairly quick sitting, and you have real caveats rather than dealbreakers.

Who it's for

Get this if San Francisco means something to you, or if you already collect the Skyline sets and want the one that pushed the format forward. It looks fantastic on a shelf, the footprint is small, and the forced perspective gives it a personality the flatter cities lack. I would steer away only if you build for the engineering thrill of a long, meaty session, because this is more of an evening than a project, and the Salesforce section will bore you before the bridge rewards you. Since it retired at the end of 2021 it now runs well above its old shelf price, so a boxed one is more of a hunt than a grab off the shelf.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this one is a game of two halves. Most of it is calm, satisfying repetition, the Painted Ladies and the bridge deck giving you a nice rhythm, the skyscrapers breaking it up with enough variety to stay interesting. Then the Golden Gate Bridge asks for real care, with fragile towers and flexible cabling that fights back, and the Salesforce Tower asks for patience through its endless double-studded core. It also arrives in numbered bags, which is unusual for an Architecture set and honestly a small kindness given how many similar small parts are in the box.

The standout element is the Dark Red flex tube, the 3.2 Outercable, which shows up in three different lengths to form the suspension cables and looks genuinely special in that color. The Salesforce Tower leans entirely on one humble part, the Tooth with Flexible Tip (61406), used as a facsimile of the real glass tapers, which is the kind of parts economy that makes Architecture fans smile. Dark Red across the bridge structure was a fresh recolor for its time. As a parts pack for the price it is fair rather than generous, but the specific pieces here, especially those Dark Red cables, are the sort of thing you remember.

Fun facts

01This was the first LEGO Architecture Skyline set to use forced perspective, shrinking the far tower of the Golden Gate Bridge so the model reads as having real depth.
02The famously orange Golden Gate Bridge is rendered in Dark Red here, paired with Dark Red flex tubes for the cables in three lengths.
03Coit Tower and Fort Point are both modelled in the set even though, unlike the other landmarks, they never get their own printed name labels.
04The set was designed by Rok Zgalin Kobe and ran from January 2019 until it retired at the end of December 2021.