Lego is launching a new £149.99 set of bricks for building architectural models but its vision of architecture’s potential seems unusually blinkeredLego is in the throes of a brand reboot. The release of the Lego Movie earlier this year, collaborations with Google and waves of Lego computer games suggest the toymaker is eager to connect with a digital generation. However, it’s also trying to retain the interest of a more mature group of model makers, a generation of adults whose career trajectories were influenced by playing with the tiny coloured bricks as children. The start of August will see the release of the Lego Architecture Studio set, a package of over 1200 white and transparent bricks designed to help realise - in miniature - your frustrated architectural visions. Yet while this new line may well tug nostalgically at your heartstrings (and at £149.99, your purse-strings), its purported link with the canon of architectural innovation seems much more open to question.The set claims to appeal to ‘anyone interested in visual design and the important and profound role it plays in our communities’, but bizarrely limits itself to referencing a narrow segment of twentieth-century Modernism.
Far from offering opportunities for the free exploration of form, the set of stark white rectangular blocks seems in rigid thrall to the International Style. You can certainly forget building a model of Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp (too curvy) or Morris and Webb’s Red House (too red). Instead it seems you’ll be doomed to endlessly recreate sections of the Weissenhofsiedlung like a Miesian robot. Not even the villa designs of Gerrit Rietveld - the De Stijl king of rectilinear geometry - get a look in, given his penchant for vivid colour.Am I being too critical? Modern architectural history is, after all, a panoply of aesthetic and intellectual theory that Lego could never hope to capture in a single box of bricks, however imaginative, but I’m surprised it has settled for such a limited collection. At least when it produced a Star Wars X-Wing spaceship model, it had the good sense to manufacture some customised parts. Even without special parts, by making use of the full range of bricks, Romanian artist Mihai Marius Mihu built all nine Circles of Hell from Dante’s Inferno out of Lego, creating mini tableaux that fused morality, storytelling, horror and architecture to great effect.
Yet in this new set, Lego’s designers seem to have become unwitting disciples of the Modernist doctrine of limited standardisation.One of the nine circles of hell modelled in Lego by Romanian artist, Mihai Marius MihuWhile Corbusier and others championed the moral superiority of white, their buildings reveal rich and diverse uses of colour, from La Tourette’s technicolour light cannons to the onyx wall in Mies’ Tugendhat House, which would glow deep red when illuminated by direct light. Perhaps Lego’s designers have fallen for historiographical exaggeration, beguiled by black and white images of colourful buildings. All this is made more puzzling by the fact that the set was apparently developed in collaboration with, and is endorsed by, ‘leading architects’ such as Safdie Architects and MAD. While you might manage a decent model of the former’s Habitat 67 complex, I challenge anyone to do justice to the latter’s fluid parametricism. Your best bet when it comes to reproducing the work of contemporary practices might be a conservative selection from Richard Meier’s canon.
At the root of all this is the stuffiness that continues to prevent architecture’s diffusion into the familiar everyday. Lego did much better, for example, with its recent Build with Chrome collaboration — a project that allows you to design original structures to populate the virtual 3D space of Google Maps. Operating somewhere between Minecraft and a junior CAD system, it has more block options than the Architecture Studio set. Lego would do well to think less about the white minimalist preoccupations of architecture’s elder statesmen, and more about consolidating its following in a future of resurgent eclecticism and increasing digitalisation.Lego teamed up with Google to create a 3D CAD program based on Lego bricksLEGO Architecture Flatiron Building (21023) Available for Click & Collect LEGO Architecture Chicago - 21033 Lego Architecture: The Visual Guide LEGO Architecture London - 21034 LEGO Architecture Sydney - 21032 Lego Architecture is a sub-brand and product range of the Lego construction toy, which aims to “celebrate the past, present and future of architecture through the Lego Brick”.
[1] The brand includes a series of Lego sets designed by ‘Architectural Artist’ Adam Reed Tucker, and each contain the pieces and instructions to build a model of a famous architectural building in micro-scale. Adam Reed Tucker earned a degree in architecture at Kansas State University in 1996.[2] While there, he sought a method to join his two passions of art and architecture, and hit upon the idea of using Lego bricks. From this, he founded Brickstructures, Inc., and began to design and build models of famous landmarks. His work was noticed by the Lego Group, and together they formed a partnership to release some of his models as commercially available Lego sets under the Lego Architecture brand. Sets in the product line contain a premium booklet, that – besides the build instructions – also include various information and pictures of the building itself. By the beginning of 2010, six sets had been released in the range, under two 'series'. Within the 'Landmark Series' are models of the Sears Tower (21000), John Hancock Center (21001), the Empire State Building (21002), and the Seattle Space Needle (21003).
Within the 'Architect Series' are models of the Guggenheim Museum (21004) and Fallingwater (21005). In the beginning of July 2010, a seventh set, the White House (21006), was released. An eighth set (21007) was released in November 2010: New York's Rockefeller Center. The ninth set (21009), Farnsworth House (Plano, Illinois), was released in April 2011. A tenth set (21008), The Burj Khalifa, was released in June 2011. The Willis Tower (21000) was also released in 2011, this kit was a re-issue of the original Sears Tower kit; the only change was the printed tile to reflect the building's renaming. An eleventh and twelfth set, the Robie House (21010) and the Brandenburg Gate (21011) were released in September 2011. In January 2012, it was announced that the next Architecture set would be 21012 Sydney Opera House. The set was released in March 2012. In June 2012, Big Ben (21013) was released. In July 2012, the Namdaemun Gate (renamed Sungnyemun Gate) (21016) was released.
In September 2012, the Villa Savoye (21014) was released. The Eames House (21015) was scheduled and then canceled, as it never came out as a set. In June 2013, the Leaning Tower of Pisa (21015) was announced for the Lego Architecture series. Its set number (21015) replaced the original Eames House after it was canceled. United Nations Headquarters (21018) came out next. In October 2013, Marina Bay Sands and the Eiffel Tower were both announced. The product range has been reviewed favourably by many commentators. Journalist Jenny Williams said "The scale on these kits is pretty small, though, so don’t expect exquisite detail. But creating with Lego bricks is quite a fun way to pay homage to great architects". ^ "Sears Tower now named Willis Tower". ^ a b "Release of two Frank Lloyd Wright Collection sets from LEGO Architecture". . May 9, 2009 ^ "The world’s tallest building in LEGO® bricks". . May 25, 2011 ^ "Modernist architectural icon immortalised in LEGO® bricks".