If we scale it by height, a historically accurate building of this set should take you approximately 200 days.

12000 pieces over 200 days, means about 60 pieces per day. I'd say that is a reasonable about actually.

So the set supposedly is going to be built with the same progression as the real thing -- the parts of the basilica that were built first in real life are also the first parts of building the Lego set.

So I kinda wonder, what is the scaling like if you account for the actual build phases. How many pieces would you have to do on each of those 200 days to match the real-life progress of the basilica.

Why would you scale by height and not volume?

Because it doesn't appear to either be designed at a consistent scale or be a solid rectangular cuboid making volume feel like an even less accurate basis for my silly joke.

The shape doesn't matter for the scaling as long as it is a 3-dimensional object that is scaled in all directions.

And I think for the actual value you get, scaling by volume would actually be more accurate.

The original took 144 years to build, and this model is anywhere between 153 to 278 times smaller. If one were to scale by volume, the build time would take at most 22 minutes, and at least 3.

I think scaling linearly works better here

Well that’s because you’re building alone and there were multiple people at once doing the real thing, and it’s a different construction method.

That only determines a constant factor though, the scaling of build time for a given method should roughly follow volume.

Would you say that building a Lego version that’s twice as high takes double the time?

Don't forget to include time to handle lawsuits and funding delays! Also, someone may break into your house and rip up the instruction book.

Well now I'm disappointed that it doesn't come with scaffolding.

I’m a little disappointed that someone beat me to this.