Lego House
It was only a matter of time before the world’s most popular building blocks became… a building, writes
Have you heard the one about Ivanka Trump, daughter of and adviser to United States President Donald Trump, gluing a pile of Lego bricks together as a six-yearold to make a model of New York’s gleaming Trump Tower? Maybe the version you heard had her brother, Don Jr, in the starring role. Or Eric. It seems they’ve all told the same story over the years, meaning it doesn’t necessarily stack up, unlike the construction kit phenomenon at the centre of it.
Danish wunderkind architect Bjarke Ingels made his Lego mark the other way – for real. As a grown-up, he used the colourful plastic building blocks of his childhood as the inspiration for a unique design centre, the showpiece of Billund, the town where Lego originated in 1932.
Lego House, which sits next door to the home where the craze originated, was commissioned as part of a mission to turn Billund, which is three hours drive west of Copenhagen, into the world’s “capital of children”. Described as an “experience hub”, its 21 overlapping blocks work like individual buildings around a 2000-squaremetre plaza that local residents can pass through on their way around town.
At the top of the 23-metre-tall structure – housing a café, store, conference facilities and a sequence of connected galleries and play rooms – is the Masterpiece Gallery, exhibiting creations by Lego fans from across the world. The gallery is constructed from the famous 2x4 bricks, underneath eight circular skylights that recall the distinctive studs of the original toy design.
In fact, the basic Lego brick is the hero element of the whole project, scaled up to building size and reflected in both the overall shape of the complex and its smaller details such as furniture and fittings.
“Through systematic creativity, children of all ages are empowered with the tools to create their own worlds and to inhabit them through play,” says Ingels on the motivation behind Lego House. “At its finest, that’s what architecture – and Lego play – is all about: enabling people to imagine new worlds that are more exciting than the status quo and to provide them with the skills to make them reality.”
Like Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric’s childhood home (but for very different reasons), Lego House stands as a unique architectural landmark. In this case because it successfully serves multiple purposes: a regeneration of the CBD of Lego’s hometown; a monument to the company that’s the lifeblood of the local community; and a clever hybrid of gallery, museum and play space. The best bit? It’s too big to accidentally stand on.