Solar coronal heating is a complex problem due to the variety of scales and physical phenomena involved, and intricacy of “boundary conditions”. Lattice models and self-organized criticality provide means to model phenomenologically some of the physics involved over a wide range of scales, and reproduce certain statistical features of solar flares. Furthermore, these models offer a basis for the study of Parker's hypothesis of coronal heating by nanoflares. We provide a short review of this approach pioneered by Lu & Hamilton (1991) and related more recent works involving lattice models.