clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

What Happens When Top Architects Go to Town With Legos

New, 1 comment


Wired magazine recently rounded up the bigwigs of some of NYC's most noted architecture firms and, well, made them play with toys. To be fair, as far as "toys" go, the Lego Architecture Studio is pretty grown-up, what with its 1,200 white and translucent specialty bricks and a 200-page guidebook "filled with architectural concepts, Lego exercises, and insights from several renowned firms." The magazine got SHoP Architects—the firm responsible for NYC's Barclay's Center and up-and-coming Domino waterfront development—Sept. 11 memorial creators Snøhetta, and Burj Khalifa and One World Trade Center architecture firm SOM on board to build whatever they desired, and photographed the results. Above is SHoP's showing, a "complex, futuristic cityscape" modeled after Japan's Metabolism movement, which looked to mash the man-built and the organic. One wouldn't expect anything less from a Lego fan like co-founder and partner Gregg Pasquarelli, who, as a child, recreated the Manhattan skyline with plastic brick and "tried melting them on the stove to bend the parts." He also "used to saw the blocks apart." So hardcore.

· We Asked Three World-Class Architects to Go Crazy With Legos [Wired]
· All Lego coverage [Curbed National]
· All SOM coverage [Curbed National]
· All SHoP Architects coverage [Curbed NY]
· All Snøhetta coverage [Curbed NY]