Designing with Lego

In 2017 I was given a Lego Architecture set, the incredible box of ideas that lego had launched to empower designers and architects in their exploration of ideas and spaces.

A box of over thousand varied pieces of varied sizes and limited shapes combines to visualise your dreams.

My first task, simplistically was to replicate our home at that point, a Victorian Semi in North London, not a natural candidate for the minimalist blocks. But convincing and satisfying all the same.

More suited to the medium was a planned Puglian Villa, clean, simple, monumental…so Lego. Test out the fenestration, think through the spaces you imagine and you’re there.

Interior design planning and visualising proved possible, planning layouts of established department stores, planning branded boutiques for global brands and in one cute moment designing brand hosting furniture for a high street health and beauty store, since opened in Covent Garden. They all started with the magic white bricks.

I wouldn’t go near those pre assigned sets that build the White House or the Venetian skyline, but the neutral white bricks are fuel for your imagination.

You get favourites in the box. One super useful piece is the flat smooth plates that hide the nodes on top of a shape. They add a finesse to your thinking that removes the lego quality of Lego. Am I getting a bit nerdy now?

If you're a minimal modernist you’ll love Lego Architecture.

In early 2019 we moved from that Victorian semi intro a new house in N8 and to understand just what we were buying, I modelled the building - reassuring!

So Lego Architecture, currently available for over double what it was bought for four years ago (!), but worth every penny. An investment no doubt.The perfect Lockdown companion.

My only quibble, apart from the price, would be the fact that every model is temporary, to go again you demolish your latest piece, I guess that’s progress.

David Dalziel, November 2020