LEGO Gets It White
The company attempts to capture the imaginations of budding architects with its new Architecture Studio
By Jennifer Krichels, Superscript September 6, 2013There is a long and fabled history of the reciprocal relationship between architects and children’s building toys. For example, it was John Wright, son of American architecture’s patron saint Frank Lloyd Wright, who invented Lincoln Logs. He came up with the idea while he and his father were working on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, after discovering a Japanese foundation strategy involving notched logs that provided enough tolerance to handle seismic movement. Even Lord Norman Foster has admitted the profound influence that British model construction sets Meccano and Trix, which he played with as a child, had on his design sensibility. Indeed, it doesn’t take a child’s imagination to see the cranes and pulleys and exposed engines of these playthings as precedents for his HSBC tower in Hong Kong.
The Books

Bill Breen

Robert Vale
So it’s no real surprise that LEGO has released a new offering targeted directly at children who aspire to join the ranks of the architectural design profession. The Danish company’s Architecture Studio is a $149.99 set that includes 1,210 LEGO bricks, most of which are white, though a handful are transparent, for glazing purposes.
Color isn’t the only thing that’s gone missing from the set. For the first time, LEGO has also omitted the instructions that usually accompany its blocks. Instead, the studio comes with a 272-page inspirational guidebook that contains chapters detailing a variety of architectural concepts and a workshop section at the end with exercises to help a still-forming mind develop some professional-grade design chops. Edited by Christopher Turner, the book includes workshops and other contributions from leading architecture firms including Sou Fujimoto, SOM, MAD, Moshe Safdie, REX, and others.
Like the decision to include a less prescriptive publication with the set, the plain color palette is meant to free users to be creative with their buildings' forms. As the guidebook explains: “It is no coincidence that Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Buckminster Fuller were all taught kindergarten in the school system that introduced building blocks into educational play. These simple forms reveal the first traces of modernism—the start of a relationship between architecture and creative children’s games that continues to this day.” Only time will tell how a new generation of LEGOs today will affect the world’s future generations of architects.
You Might Also Like
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP: by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- One Book and Why: Graphic Designer Stefan Sagmeister Recommends . . .
- Quote of the Day: Deborah Berke & Begin Again
- One Book and Why: Architect Thom Mayne Recommends . . .
- One Book and Why: Graphic Designer Louise Fili Recommends . . .
- One Book and Why: Architect Steven Holl Recommends . . .
Recent Articles


