A towering city of bricks that’s both everywhere and nowhere
Couple’s skyline of Lego took months to create and is now on display at Holt Renfrew men’s shop
The conversation took an especially interesting turn after I poked the two gents about fastidiousness.
“He’s pretty Type-A . . .” husband number one started to say.
“I’m just one more vocal about my Type-A-ness,” husband two interjected, accusing the other of the same. “I have my moments . . .” he conceded.
“I guess I am pretty Type-A,” gently muttered the original accusant, allowing it to end. We laughed.
As most might recognize, what was at play was the particular pas de deux, or even the rehearsed patois, of any long-buckled couple. And in the case of Laird Kay and Raymond Girard (he, by all accounts, the Type-Aer of the duo), the banter perhaps came sugared with pre-party jitters.
Our rendezvous took place immediately before the official unveiling of Lego Metropolitan, an unlikely installation that’s made the curious course from the basement of their house in the Annex to prime time on the Mink Mile.
“A city that’s both everywhere — and nowhere — at the time same,” is how Girard summarizes the snatches of skyline hocus-pocused out of young-at-heart Lego pieces, taking up residence over two floors at the Holt Renfrew men’s shop on Bloor St. W. until June.
There are more than 200,000 pieces — a riot of hues: lime, lavender and azure. Towers and towers and towers.
A work in progress for more than a year, the project was once little more than a stress-release exercise, and an in-theknow must-see for certain travellers of the media-society circuit, who’d check out the growing Lego dreamscape at the home of Girard and Kay during the couple’s annual, gotta-attend Christmas party.
“I was having a hard time at work,” Girard — a self-described “suit” — starts to tell me about how the chimera all started. It was Christmas 2013, and he was in his hometown of Winnipeg.
His nephew was playing with Lego. And, soon, uncle was, too. He’d studied architecture years ago, but had never practised.
“There is just something comforting about the click,” Girard laughs now.
Lego, he’d discovered, was a release, and the stuff of back-to-childhood clarity.
“Leave it to the Danes,” he adds, referring to the provenance of the always-in-vogue blocks.
Flying back to Toronto, right after that trip, he, together with Kay, made a pit-stop at Sherway Gardens Mall — literally on the way from the airport — to secure further Lego provisions.
The ensuing project began in their basement that night. Pulling from his many travels — Girard is a president at Spafax, which produces the inflight magazines for dozens of airlines — his looming skyline was, soon enough, turning out to be a little bit of Hong Kong, a pinch of Santiago (where he once lived), some Dubai, some Toronto, and some de rigueur Gotham City. “I’ve always been a skyscraper nerd,” he declares.
Amusingly, Girard also informs that most buildings have a TV serial attached to it, as it was his practice to “binge-watch” something while Lego’ing away.
“The tallest lit one is House of Cards Season 3,” he says of the mini-structures on view now at Holt’s Men. “There’s an Orange is the New Black group of towers. A Suits block. And so on. I can usually pinpoint exactly what I was watching by the building.”
His husband of eight years, meanwhile, got involved a little, too, but made his main mission to meticulously document “Lego City.” Kay, who used to design wine-cellars — a niche job, indeed — works as a professional photographer, with a particular passion for aviation photography.
“They’re perfectly suited to one another,” their longtime friend, Amy Rosen, the author of Toronto Cooks, tells me.
In Lego and in life, it would seem, they are a creative force.
“One time,” she further reveals, “Raymond popped by and colourcoded my bookshelves, taking everything off in big piles and then methodically working in silence (I wasn’t allowed to speak). An hour later, my boring old shelves were a masterpiece.”
Asked to name their further edifices in Toronto, the two building nuts give thoughtful answers.
“I love the retro-optimism of the CN Tower,” says Girard.
As for Kay, he singles out the Harbour Commission Building, built in 1917.
As for their new Holt’s spotlight, it came around when the luxury retail- er heard about their enterprise through the Lego grapevine. The men’s-centric store has been angling to do creative collaborations since opening in the fall, including installations such as this.
Girard is quick with an analogy between his bricks and the “building blocks” of men’s fashion — the suit, the tie, the shoes.
“That’s the beauty of Lego, too — it’s kind of timeless.”
“The tallest lit one is House of Cards Season 3. There’s an Orange is the New Black group of towers. A Suits block. I can usually pinpoint exactly what I was watching by the building.” RAYMOND GIRARD BUILDER AND BINGE TV WATCHER