Lego’s first book nook is an addictively interactive diorama

Lego just announced its first book nook: Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street. I was guessing this was coming sooner than later, with Lego’s ever-increasing focus on the adult market and the growing popularity of book nooks. The design is fantastic, full of the fine details you expect of high-quality book nooks, which are miniature dioramas that are designed to fit between books on a shelf. But, unlike those, you can actually take this off the bookshelf, unfold it into a three-building Victorian London street, and play with it.

Conceived by Japanese artist Monde in 2018, book nooks often depict a street, a room, or some other structure inspired by a theme from a real book. Originally, people made their own but they quickly became popular on social media, so companies in Japan and China started to sell kits. These precious windows into literary realities are very intricate and complex to build, usually with LED lights to illuminate the scene at night. People who build them find them relaxing.

Since adult Lego fans mostly buy sets to chill, it makes sense that the Billund, Denmark-based toy company decided to make its own version. It has been doubling down on a trend that began in the late 2000s, when it released the huge 7,500-brick Millennium Falcon, a massive set that started the Ultimate Collector Star Wars line of sets that catered to grown-up Lego fans (like me) by appealing to their childhood fetishes.

The success of these earliest complex sets spurred the company to release other lines, like Lego Architecture, which allow people to build anything from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. Last year it launched a Botanical Collection line, which got deeper into the adult-oriented relaxing space, and iconic pop culture objects in a line aptly named Lego Icons. This is where you will find the Sherlock Holmes Book Nook, available for pre-order for $120 for shipping on June 1.

They are playable!

When folded and placed in-between books, the book nook offers a view of a street flanked by precious buildings full with architectural details, and a cobblestone street. You will notice that the façades don’t run parallel to each other, but converge towards the back in a faux one-point perspective, a design conceived to create an optical illusion that makes it look deeper than what it actually is. There’s Sherlock and Watson minifigs, plus Irene Adler, Paige and Professor Moriarty. I just wish Lego had included LED lighting, too.

Unlike assembled wooden or carton book nooks, you can take the Lego book nook out of the bookshelf and unfold it to form a perfectly straight lineup of three buildings. Not surprisingly, the designers found ways to make the set fully interactive. There’s even a secret hideout for Moriarty, which you can operate by turning a chimney in the building’s roof. You can peek into Holmes’ study by pushing open the top floor wall of 221B Baker Street. There’s also a bookshelf in a book nook in a bookshelf inside the window display of the book store in one of the buildings, which you can access by rotating its cylindrical window display. The kind of clever infinite loop that can open real portals between our reality and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s universe.